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THE TIMES" SPECIAL COEEESPOmENCE EEOM CHINA 
IN THE YEAES 1857-58. 



S^EI^ILHsTTEX) B-X- IPEIS/lVEISSIOl^. 



WITE COEEECTIONS A^^D ADDITIOliTS BY THE AUTHOE, 



GEORGE AVINGROVE COOKE, 

AUTHOE OF "the HISTOEX OF PAETT," ETC. 



^ ^t^ etittton. 



LONDON: 
a ROUTLEDGE & CO. EARRINGDON STREET 

NEW toes:: 18, BEEKMAN STEEET. 
1859. 



.C77 



887270 
•29 



"^ PREFACE, 



The letters collected in this volume have been received 
with so much favour by the general public that I am desirous 
they should live a little longer in the world's notice. Whether 
they have any value in a literary point of view 1 am not 
careful to inquire : I shall value them only by the effect they 
may have upon the minds of my countrymen ; and their 
success towards this object must be entirely due to that great 
organ of public opinion which created them, and gave them 
currency. It is, to my thinking, no small privilege to have 
been allowed to take a rather prominent part in the most 
noteworthy enterprise of our age. If the treaty which has 
just been concluded open the interior of China to Western 
commerce, it will open it also to Christianity. How long it 
may be before these two elements of civilization leaven the 
whole lump, we must not rashly reckon ; but it is impossible 
that our merchants and our missionaries can course up and 
down the inland waters of this great region, and traffic in 
their cities and jDreach in their villages, without wearing at 
the crust of a Chinaman's stoical and sceptical conceit. 
The whole present system in China is a hollow thing, with a 
hard, brittle surface : we try in vain to scratch it ; but some 
day a happy blow will shiver it. It will all go together. A 
Chinaman has no idea of surrendering a part to save the 
rest. The only question with him is, how long can it be 
resisted ? how can it be evaded ? The shrewdest among the 



VI PREFACE. 

Chinese feel that everything depends upon a steady and 
unyielding resistance to change. The king of Cochin, 
whose work I shall cite hereafter, is in accord with all the 
governing classes of China in believing that concession is 
always fatal. They who have intercourse with the mercantile 
and emigrating classes among the Chinese may think they 
see progress at work ; but the brokers who deal with British 
merchants, and the emigrants who come back from Australia 
or California, have no influence upon the government of China. 
Yeh, and men like Yeh, are the only exponents of imperial 
policy. 

It was this knowledge which induced me to sacrifice so 
much in order to be able to study the character of one 
great Chinese statesman. They who read the anecdotes I 
collected during my voyage in company with this important, 
but not agreeable personage, may see why it is the Chinese 
go on using bows and arrows, and exploding rusty match- 
locks. It is plain that Yeh is the Eldon of China — Eldon 
intensified, and omnipresent and omnipotent in Chinese 
official life. It is " bows and arrows, and the wisdom of 
our ancestors " — " no barbarians, and the Chinese constitu- 
tion." It is plain that young China, from Singapore or 
California, and even middle-aged China, in the person of the 
Howquas and Minquas, can do nought against this obese 
old China. 

Lord Elgin was well rid of Yeh. He must be the despair 
of all diplomacy. He is one of those things to which 
nature has given great inert force, and no other power. He 
is like a landslip or a fallen avalanche, blocking up a pass. 
You must tunnel through it, or you must wait till it melts 
away ; push it from your path you cannot. It is his duty 
and his destiny to lie there, and there he will lie. That 
" Taoli," of which we read so much, is, among its many 



PREFACE. Vll 

meanings, not quite destiny, but it is sometliing very like 
it. It often approaclies to that rooted notion which un- 
tutored minds mistake for conscience, — an ill-defined and 
fanciful rule of right, which they are prepared to enforce by 
the bloodiest tyranny over the weak, and by passive resist- 
ance to the strong. 

I have, in these letters, introduced no elaborate essay 
upon Chinese character. It is a great omission. No theme 
could be more tempting, no subject could afford wider scope 
for ingenious hypothesis, profound generalization, and trium- 
phant dogmatism. Every small critic will, probably, utterly 
despise me for not having made something out of such 
opportunities. The truth is, that I have written several 
very iBne characters for the whole Chinese race, but having 
the misfortune to have the people under my eye at the same 
time with my essay, they were always saying something or 
doing something which rubbed so rudely against my 
hypothesis, that in the interest of truth I burnt several 
successive letters. I may add that I have often talked over 
this matter with the most eminent and candid sinologues, 
and have always found them ready to agree with me as to the 
impossibility of a Western mind forming a conception of 
Chinese character as a whole. These difficulties, however, 
occur only to those who know the Chinese practically : a 
smart writer, entirely ignorant of the subject, might readily 
strike off a brilliant and antithetical analysis, which should 
leave nothing to be desired but Truth. 

Some day, perhaps, we may acquire the necessary know- 
ledge to give to each of the glaring inconsistencies of a 
Chinaman's mind its proper weight and influence in the 
general mass. At present, I at least must be content to 
avoid strict definitions, and to describe a Chinaman by his 
most prominent qualities. 



Vlll PKEFACE. 

The Chinese philosophers teach that man is born with a 
perfect nature ; that is to say, that men at their birth are by 
nature radically good. " In this they all approximate, but 
in practice they widely diverge. For if not educated, the 
natural character is changed, and surrounding circumstances 
corrupt the perfect intelligence." I think I have said in 
these letters, that the Chinese, like the Greeks, have a cere- 
monial religion and a thoughtful philosophy. The emperor 
and his of&cials, following the ancient traditions of the 
Chinese dynasties, adore Heaven and Earth ; the people burn 
incense to the Buddhist idols, and all worship their ancestors. 
But in their universities and in their public examinations, 
which are the only portals to rank or official power, they 
teach no superstition. The Chinaman can bow in the 
temple of Buddha, or join in the Latin Romish mass, sacrifice 
to Heaven and Earth, or sit in an American conventicle, or 
jump through the fire with the priests of perfect reason. 
Hauling the god of rain out in the sunshine, to make 
him feel how parched the ground is, is a practice which 
shows the cynical half-belief with which the Chinaman 
regards his idols. Their Confucianism comprehends no 
immortality in the soul, no future rewards and punish- 
ments ; it is a bare groundwork upon which any superstition 
may be embroidered. 

I was visiting a Buddhist temple once in company with 
a remarkably intelligent Chinaman, a teacher in one of the 
consulates, and who could speak a little English. While we 
were there, a military mandarin of no very high rank, but 
a Tartar, came in and burnt a little incense. Having made 
his kotoo to the god of war, he was going out, when he saw 
us, and availed himself of the license common throughout 
China of introducing himself. In the usual form, he asked 
my " honourable age," then my " honourable, name," then 



PEEFACE. IX 

the name of my "honourable nation;" all which queries 
were duly answered through the interpreter. This is 
generally the full scope of a Chinaman's courtesies ; but 
when I had, as in politeness bound, reciprocated that 
question, I saw that my new friend was inclined to have a 
little badinage with the stranger. He asked me, " How large 
is your country ? " and I answered, " The British empire is 
about three times as large as the eighteen provinces of 
China." The interpreter looked incredulous, but translated. 
The Tartar evidently thought I had told him a very tall lie. 
Then he asked me whether our land was fruitful. I 
answered, " It was neither so rich as China nor so poor as 
Tartary." My friend was a little nettled, and, as the Chinese 
nearly always do when they want to be uncivil, he asked 
why the barbarians do -not wear tails. The answer I give a 
Chinaman when he asks this question is, that we have never 
been conquered by the Tartars ; but as this would not do 
with a Tartar, I replied, pointing to the gods, " We are of 
the race of your gods, and you see they wear no tails." I 
thought I had said rather a smart thing, but the mandarin 
tapping the plaster head and belly of the hideous pot- 
bellied idol, asked, " And are you made of the same materials 
as your ancestors 1 " Both the celestials laughed. He had 
not hesitated a moment to extricate himself at the expense 
of the god to which he had just been sacrificing, and I found 
I had " caught a Tartar." One of the Jesuit missionaries 
tells us a very similar anecdote illustrative of a Chinaman's 
small respect for his gods. Seeing a priest smoking his 
pipe before the image of Xam-ti, he remonstrated with him 
for want of respect to his own idol. " Nay," said the 
priest, " Xam-ti smokes his jossticks (incense), and is glad 
enough to get them, why should he think it an indignity to 
him that I smoke my tobacco ? " 



X PREFACE. 

The Genoese have a proverb, "He lies like a tooth- 
drawer j " no doubt a Greek, or a tooth-drawer, or an Italian 
picture-dealer will tell lies ; but he knows that he is doing 
a mean, dirty thing, and that he at least ought to be 
ashamed if he is found out. He knows that lying is in the 
abstract a public offence reprobated by all men. John 
Chinaman is taught no such sentiment. With him a par- 
ticular lie is a particular offence to the party lied to j but 
lying itself is a lawful thing. It is with him what a smart 
repa/rtee is with us. The immediate recipient may wince 
and retort ; but the world applauds, and the sayer of the 
hon-mot chuckles. John Smith assures you that leather has 
risen to such a fabulous price that he is obliged to charge 
you five pounds for a pair of boots, and is at that price 
considerably out of pocket. Now you know, and John 
Smith knows, that this is a monosyllabic mistake ; but if 
you roughly tell John Smith he is a liar, he will infallibly 
raise his tradesman fist and fell you. So in weaker degree 
Simonides or Mendosa would feel it necessary to affect to be 
unjustly treated if you call them habitual liars. But if you 
say the same thing to a Chinaman, you arouse in him no sense 
of outrage, no sentiment of degradation. He does not deny 
the fact. His answer is, " I should not dare to lie to your 
excellency." To say to a Chinaman, " You are an habitual 
liar, and you are meditating a lie at this moment," is like 
saying to an Englishman, " You are a confirmed punster, 
and I am satisfied you have some horrible pun in your head 
at this moment." 

Much has been said and written about Chinese politeness. 
There is no nation in which in public places you see habi- 
tually so little of it. The Chinese peasant has no notion of 
courtesy. He never makes you a salutation in passing j he 
never moves out of your way, or even deflects from his 



PREFACE. XI 

straight course, without looking to see whether you will get 
out of his way. The higher classes keep all their politeness 
for great occasions. For those occasions they have a ritual of 
ceremonies, and this ritual is a sharp satire upon their daily 
practice. As their stage plays recall the events of extinct 
dynasties, so their ceremonial politeness are histrionic repre- 
sentations of extinct virtues. Humanity, self-denial, and 
that true courtesy which teaches Western nations that it is 
a part of personal dignity to respect the feelings of others, 
is in China dead in fact, and alive only in pantomime. The 
life and state papers of a Chinese statesman, like the Con- 
fessions of Rousseau, abound in the finest sentiments and the 
foulest deeds. He cuts oflf ten thousand heads, and cites a 
passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He 
pockets the money given him to repair an embankment, and 
thus inundates a province; and he deplores the land lost 
to the cultivator of the soil. He makes a treaty which he 
secretly declares to be only a deception for the moment, 
and he exclaims against the crime of perjury. The 
meaner sort imitate at a distance the same qualities. They 
will put you to death if you innocently cause a death, yet 
they will not draw a struggling man out of the water, because 
it would spoil such a capital joke. A Chinaman laughs when 
he tells you of the death of his most intimate friend — I 
mean acquaintance, for John Chinaman does not know 
what friendship means. Mr. Meadows, who is always an 
unwilling witness against the Chinese, tells us of a Chinaman 
who laughed until he held his sides, when telling of the 
funny death of his most constant companion. 

Yet there is one virtue left in China. We say of an 
unhealthy man, that he is " run to belly ; " of an unpro- 
ductive crop, " that it is run to stalk : " so Chinese morality 
suffers emaciation in all its parts but one, in order to swell 



Xll PREFACE. 

and fatten that one to unnatural magnitude. It expands 
a single duty and a single sentiment into a code of morals 
and a system of religion. The only god of a Chinaman is 
our fat friend Paterfamilias. If the fact of paternity 
operated to purify a man's mind and make him just to 
all men, this would be as good a heathenism as we could 
hope to find. But when opportunities offer, a Chinaman 
prefers to " sacrifice to his ancestors " other people's goods, 
and it is consistent with all experience that the same in- 
dividual may be a most obedient son and a most noxious 
ruffian. 

We are told by a received authority on Chinese ethics, 
that the morality of the Chinese is the morality of the 
Decalogue, and that in Confucius we find the fundamental 
Christian command, " Do unto all men that ye would that 
they should do unto you." Both these positions are, to 
speak mildly of them, inaccurate. Whatever may be twisted 
from the books by Western commentators, a Chinaman has 
no notion of duty beyond the sphere of his own family, 
wherein, for form's sake, the prince is included. Of course 
he knows that it is dangerous to steal or to commit murder, 
and in commercial transactions you may trust to a China- 
man's knowledge that honesty is the best j^olicy? and that 
he must not " lose face " among those with whom he deals ; 
but I cannot find that robbery or piracy is looked upon 
as a disgraceful profession, or that a man in high office who 
has embezzled a few millions of taels is a disreputable 
person. We have just seen an instance in one of our own 
settlements, of a Tartar who was supposed to have accumu- 
lated four hundred thousand taels by unscrupulous extor- 
tion : the Chinese government took away two hundred 
thousand, and removed him to another province. This man 
is a useful sponge, to be squeezed occasionally, — not a 



PSEFACE. Xm 

discreditable person to be punished and dismissed. The 
offences which the law of nature points out as crimes are 
not in Chinese ethics offences against Heaven or against the 
state, but only offences against the individual. No Chinaman 
ever yet thought that by stealing or bearing false witness 
he was offending against the King of heaven or Buddha. 

So with respect to the suggestion that the great precept 
of Christianity is to be found in Confucius. The Chinese 
philosopher goes only half-way ; he says, " Do not do to 
others what you would not have done to you." Our great 
Teacher comprehends in one short sentence an admonition 
against offences, and a complete code of duties. The Chinese 
philosopher stops short when he has forbidden crimes. 

It is not always safe to foretell a man's actions by refer- 
ence to his theoretical opinions ; and when I am tempted to 
speak of Chinamen as iwactically destitute of honour and 
honesty, I am warned from my general proposition by the 
facts that Chinamen have been found to sell their lives for 
the benefit of their family, and that large sums of money 
are annually intrusted by European merchants to Chinamen, 
who go up the country to purchase teas and silks upon com- 
missions, which are always faithfully executed. We must 
not, however, expect to find that in a people educated as 
the Chinese have been, those higher principles of conduct 
which govern us are prevalent or to be counted on. We 
must not in dealing with them fall into the error of sup- 
posing that words are things, or that our morality is their 
morality. Material guarantees and present force, or obvious 
self-interest, are the only bonds that will certainly bind them. 

I am tempted to quote a state paper confirmatory of 
some of the foregoing observations. It was found among 
Yeh's archives, and is a report addressed to the emperor in 
1842, by Kei-ying, at that time engaged in negotiations with 



XIV PREFACE. 



tlie English. It throws some light upon the nature of 
Chinese civilization, so far as that word may be supposed to 
comprehend good faith and a respect for women. Kei-ying 



" Kight, as it doubtless is, to act on them [the barbarians] 
by fair dealings, it is yet more needful to keep them in 
hand by stratagem. 

" It is the wont of the barbarians to make much of their 
women. Whenever the visitor is a person of distinction, 
the wife is sure to come out to receive him. In the case of 
the American barbarian Parker, and the French barbarian 
Lagrene, for instance, both of them have brought their 
foreign wives with them ; and when your slave has gone to 
their foreign residence upon business, these foreign women 
have appeared and saluted him. Your slave was confounded 
and ill at ease, while they, on the contrary, were greatly 
delighted at the honour done them. 

" The truth is, that it is not possible to regulate the 
customs of the Western state by the ceremonial of China, 
and to break out in rebuke, while it would do nothing to 
cleave their dulness, might chance to give rise to suspicion 
and ill-feeling. With the English barbarians the ruler is a 
female; with the American and French a male. The 
English and French rulers reign for life, the American is 
elected by his countrymen, and is changed once in four 
years ; and when he retires from his throne, he takes rank 
with the non-official classes. 

" With a people so uncivilized as they are, blindly unin- 
telligent in styles and modes of address, a tenacity of forms 
in official correspondence such as would duly take place, the 
superior above and the inferior below, would be a riving of 
the tongue and a blistering of the lips. The only course, in 
that case, would be to affect to be deaf to it. Instead, 



PREFACE. XV 

therefore, of a contest about empty names, — whicli can be of 
no practical utility, — it has been held better to pass by 
minor details while following out a great policy." 

Upon this report there is an imperial comment, written 
by the vermilion pencil : — 

" It was the only proper arrangement to be made. We 
understand the whole question." 

The shrewd Tartar who made this report to his emperor 
takes a much more sensible view of the proper method of 
maintaining intercourse between the authorities of the two 
nations than has been generally taken by our officials. It 
is the policy which I advocated in these letters long before 
I had seen the document just quoted. If we had sometimes 
" affected to be deaf," — if we had avoided " contests about 
empty names," — if we had passed by minor details and 
followed out a great policy, our dealings with this country 
would not be so one-sided as they now are. The Chinese 
ignorantly believe that their true policy is to sell and not to 
buy, and that policy they have hitherto, to our great incon- 
venience, succeeded in carrying out. 

This paper may also instruct us that we have very much 
underrated the knowledge possessed by the Chinese of 
foreign countries. The normal Chinese mandarin — whereof 
Yeh is the living type — may be contentedly ignorant of 
everything but his own vague and barren philosophy ; but 
men like Kei-ying always crop up when occasion calls them 
forth j and although we do not, at present, know them by 
name, we may guess from antecedent facts that there is a 
reform party even at Pekin. A very eminent Chinese 
statesman, with whom we often came in contact, collected 
and published, some years ago, a universal geography, which 
is described to me as by no means contemptible in its 
execution. 



XVI PREFACE. 

It is a common belief among the English, that the Chinese 
are ill-informed as to the events that pass upon the coast, 
and that the officials conceal all their reverses from the 
emperor. The papers which have fallen into our hands at 
the capture of Yeh will disabuse us of many errors on the 
subject of China, and of this among others. Mr. Wade is 
at present, with laborious zeal, sinking shafts and driving 
adits through this formidable mass : but awaiting these more 
perfect revelations, I cannot resist citing in this place a royal 
work, which shows how closely a king of Cochin-China reads 
his history, and how little good his studies do him. 

Yuen Fuh-siuen, Mr. Wade explains, ascended the throne 
of Cochin-China in January, 1841 ; receiving his investiture 
the following year from the emperor of China, according to 
custom. In the sixth year of his reign he completed a 
" Suimmary of the Histories of the Dynasties by the hand of 
Koyalty." This is very succinct. The story of from thirty 
to forty centuries preceding the invasion of the Manchus is 
packed into two chapters, of some forty pages each ; the 
proceedings of the Manchus themselves up to 1847 occupy 
the third and last chapter; and it is worthy of remark, 
that two and a half of its forty-two pages are devoted to a 
condemnation of the errors the royal author conceives the 
court of Peking to have committed in over-condescension to 
the English barbarians in 1816 and 1842. 

The book is written with the usual pretension of like 
works in China. It is somewhat in the manner of Bayle's 
Dictionary; the chronicle proper, in elaborate style and 
large text ; the commentary, in double columns of small type, 
and more diffuse. The copy in Mr. Wade's possession was 
obtained in Cochin-China by a French missionary, about the 
beginning of 1849, two years after the death of the royal 
writer. 



PEEFACE. XVJl 

After an nniisnally detailed account of the serious attempt 
HQade on Peking, in Kia K'ing's reign, by the ^Vhite Lily 
faction, tlie chronicle proceeds : — 

Text. — " Vf hat do we hear ? An envoy coming in from 
the outer nation Yingkili [England], deceives the emperor ; 
presented, he keeps his person erect, and departs without 
performing any obeisance. Is this the form of things that 
should be 1 

Commentary.—" In the 20th year of Kia K'ing [1815-lG], 
an envoy, with tribute from England, arrived at T'ientsin. 
Sugogheh and Kwang Hwui were commanded to signify 
to him that the emperor was pleased to bestow on him a 
banquet. They desired him to return thanks for it, falling 
on his knees thrice, and striking his head nine times, as 
the rite requires ; which done he was to enter the capital. 
The envoy refused. Sugogheh and his colleague attempted 
to constrain him, but did not succeed, and without repre- 
sentation on the subject brought him on at once. When 
he reached the capital, Hoshiht'ai was commanded to exer- 
cise him in the ceremony \sc., of prostration]; but the 
envoy said he was quite perfect in it and when presented 
would be sure to be able to perform it according to the rite. 
Hoshiht'ai, believing his words, hastened to apply to the 
emperor for permission to introduce him. But when the 
day came on which the emperor desired him to appear, 
the envoy made no obeisance [or did not salute, did not 
pay his respects], but departed. The emperor thrice in- 
quired for him, and Hoshiht^ai thrice replied that he was 
ill. The emperor, enraged, commanded a ph^^sician to visit 
the envoy; but the envoy was already gone some distance. 
He was pursued to Kwang Tung, and there escorted on 
board the ship in which he returned to his country. Now 
the emperor of China is the common ruler of the empire ; 

h 



XVIU PREFACE. 

England is a single, small barbarian state : and was it the 
form of things that should be, that when the envoy of the 
latter gave himself such airs as these, the government of 
China, so far from being al^le to punish his crime, should 
actually go the length of escorting him home ? Herein we 
find the origin of the pride and intractability of the bar- 
barians of the seas. 

Text. — " The effect of this was bequeathed to the pre- 
sent day. Tau Kwang being emperor, the Tmg [English] 
barbarians crossed the sea, and made incursions into seven 
provinces. Widely and madly did they kill and slay^ 
During three years they were not suppressed. So far from 
it, there Avas a tendering of bribes and treating for peace ; a 
cutting off of territory to be presented to people. In v/hat 
respect did this differ from the ' humble ivords and rich 
gifts ' of Kau Tsung, of the Sung dynasty, to the Kin [Tar- 
tars] ? And will not the feebleness of his power in the 
25th year of Jin Tsung, of the Tsing dynasty, bring discredit 
upon his predecessors of the Tsing ? 

Commentary. — " In the commerce of the English with 
the men of the Tsing [the Chinese], their only profit was 
on opium. The men of Tsing had been much injured by it ; 
families had been broken up, estates ruined, life lost, health 
destroyed ; so great was its mischief. In the 20th year of 
Tau Kwang, the emperor of the Tsing issued an interdict 
against it, ordaining that offenders sliould be put to death 
and their property confiscated. Lin Tsih-sii was made 
governor-general of the Two Kwang to take order with 
the English barbarians, and to put a stop to the opium 
trade. Tsih-sii [sc, Lin] from the time of his arrival 
showed himself pure and determined. Of the English 
barbarians he merely demanded the whole of their opium, 
which, when he had received, he destroyed, and he made 



PREFACE. XIX 

a prisoner of their chief, thinking by these means to insiu'e- 
the submission of the outer nations. The English bar- 
barians, however, were proud and intractable, and, excelling 
in fighting on the water, they put to sea in vessels of w^ar. 
They first invaded Kwang Tung, giving out that the pro- 
perty of English merchants had been seized without a 
cause, and demanding full compensation. The refusal of 
the men of Tsing brought on war ; Kishen replaced Lin 
Tsih-sii, who, for receiving the opium, and seizing the bar-- 
barian chief, was found guilty of causing war in a frontier 
jurisdiction. Kishen loved money, and having taken bribes 
of the Englisli barbarians, agreed in the first place to give 
them a portion of territory, and privily entertained rela- 
tions with the outer barbarians. The matter coming to 
light, the emperor of the Tsing refused his sanction ; 
seized Kishen and put him to death,* and the English 
barbarians, alleging a breach of faith in respect of the ter- 
ritory set apart for them, invaded the country in great 
force, spreading like a flood over the sevent provinces of 
Full Kien, Cheh Kiang, Shan Tung, Chili Li, Kiang Su, 
and Shing King [Manchuria], Ting-hai, Chin-hai, I^^ing-po, 
Cba-pu, Chusan, and the Tiger's Gate [Bocca Tigris], were 
lost, one after the other. The admiral Kwan T'ien-pei, the 
governor-general Yiikien, and some tens of high officers 
besides, fell in battle. The calamities of war lasted three 
years without any one being able to bring matters to an 
end ; everything was in the greatest confusion, when, as a 
last resource, Ilipu, Kiying, and Niukien proposed to tiie 
emperor of the Tsing to allow trade at Kwang-chau [Can- 

* Ivishen was sentenced to death, but lived to rise and fall once and 
again. He died at last io 1855, waging war against the T'ai P'iag- 
insurgents in Kiang Su, 

+ Seven including Kv/ang Tung above named. We did not invade. 
Snan Tung, Cliih Li, or Manchuria. 

h 2 



XX PREFACE. 

ton], Fuh-chau, Hia-mnn [Amoy], and Sliang-Lai as before, 
and to give Hongkong to the English barbarians for ever. 
These further extorted 21,000,000 dollars as compensation 
in full for their merchandise, and their expenses for all 
the years that troops had been employed, before they 
•would treat of peace. The emperor of the Tsing, having 
no alternative but to consent to what they required, engaged 
to pay the full amount of the compensation in three annual 
instalments, during the years hwei-imai [1844], hiah-sldn 
'[1845], and yih-tsz^ [1846], They then went so far as to 
•exact a record of his assent in the handwriting of the em- 
peror of the Tsing ; and though their language was most 
arrogant and disrespectful, the emperor of the Tsing stooped 
-to accede to everything they demanded. 

" In what then did his course, as above, differ from the 
' humble words mid rich gifts' of his majesty Kau, of the 
Sung dynasty, to the Kin [Tartars] 1 Be it that Lin 
'Tsih-sii was not suiiiciently strict, and did not cause the 
barbarians to be expelled ; further, that by taking their 
opium and destroying it he gave them something to lay 
hold of as a grievance, and that so in process of time he 
•did bring war upon the frontiers ; the real cause of the 
evil, nevertheless, will be found to be simply that the policy 
handed down by Kia K'ing was bad." 

This is a very fair historical account of the transactions 
whereof it treats. If George III. could come to life and 
•write a history of the repeal of the Test and Corporation 
Acts, we may imagine that the spirit of the narrative would 
not be very different. 

It is from the Chinese writings composed for circulation, 
among themselves that we can best judge the temper and 
the prejudices of the people with whom we have to deal. 



PREFACE. XXt 

If we trust to conversation, or to papers addressed to us, we 
cannot but go wrong. 

While I write tliis preface, a telegram tells us that Lord 
Elgin's work has been done. The terms of the treaty are 
settled ; the exercise of the Christian religion is placed under 
iiiiperial protection, the ports are ojDened, and China, through 
jigents resident at Pekin, enters into diplomatic relations 
with the "Western world. The great opportunity we have 
sought is now open before u^'. 

Lord Elgin, in his reply to the address of the merchants- 
of Shanghai, thus wisely counsels his countrymen as to their 
future action. He says : — 

" I found myself, on my arrival in this country, compelled 
to act in a great measure on my own judgment. I accepted 
this task, as in duty bound, without hesitation ; but not, I 
hope, without a due sense of the responsibility attaching to 
an agent, who, in a distant land, beyond the reach of advice, 
and in circumstances of unusual difficulty, finds himself the 
guardian of the good name and interests of a great Christian 
nation. 

"In my communications with the functionaries of the 
Chinese government, I have been guided by two simple rules 
of action. I have never preferred a demand which I did not 
believe to be both moderate and just, and from a demand so 
preferred I have never receded. These principles dictated 
the policy which resulted in the capture and occupation 
of Canton. These same principles will be followed by me, 
with the same determination, to their results, if it should 
be necessary to repeat the experiment in the vicinity ot 
the capital of the emperor of China. 

" It is matter for me of the highest gratification to know, 
that in pursuing this policy of combined moderation and 



XXll PKEFACE. 

firmness, I can count not only on the hearty co-operation 
and active support of the representative of his imperial 
majesty the emperor of the French, but also on the good- 
■\vill and sympathy of the representatives of other great and 
powerful nations interestd with ourselves in extending the 
area of Christian civilization, and multiplying those com- 
mercial ties which are destined to bind the East and West 
toj^ether in the bonds of mutual advantaoje. 

" One word, gentlemen, in conclusion, as to the parts 
which we have respectively to play in this important work, 
^nd more especially with reference to the last sentence of 
your address, in which you express the trust that the result 
of my exertions may be ' more fully to develop tlie vast 
resources of China, and to extend among the people the 
nelevatiug influences of a higher civilization.' 

" The expectations held out to British manufacturers at 
ihe close of the last war between Great Britain and China, 
"when they were told that a new world was opened to their 
irade, so vast that all the mills in Lancashire could not 
make stocking-stuff sufl&cient for one of its provinces, have 
not been realized ; and I am of opinion that when force and 
diplomacy shall have done all that they can legitimately 
-effect, the work which has to be accomplished in China will 
^Die but at its commencement. 

-* When the barriers which prevent free access to the 
interi<jr of the country shall have been removed, the Chris- 
tian civilization of the West will find itself face to face not 
v/ith barbarism but with an ancient civilization in many 
respects effete and imperfect ; but in others not without 
claims to our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry which 
will then ensue, Christian civilization v/ill have to win its 
way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it 
manifest that a faith which reaches to heaven furnishes 



PREFACE. XXUl 

better guarantees for public and private morality than one 
which does not rise above the earth. 

'•' At the same time the machina-facturing West v/ill be 
in presence of a population the most universally and labori- 
ously manufacturing of any on the earth. It can achieve 
victories in the contest in which it will have to engage only 
hy proving that physical knowledge and mechanical skill 
applied to the arts of production are more than a match 
for the most persevering efforts of unscientific industry. 

'• This is the task which is before you, and towards the 
accomplishment of which, within the sphere of my duty, I 
shall rejoice to co-operate." 

If I may add a phrase as to the intention and execution 
of these letters, I would say that upon arriving in the 
country I anxiously discarded all Europe-bred opinions, and 
applied myself earnestly to the collection of facts before I 
indulged in any new beliefs. It was only by slov/ gradations 
that a full conception of the enormous future vrhicli this 
Eastern Asia may be made to open to the commercial 
thousands and to the labouring millions of my countrymen, 
became fixed in my mind, and was allowed to appear in my 
correspondence. Always earnestly occupied by this serious 
object, perhaps I ought to apologize for the levity of style 
in which many of these letters are written. But a public 
writer must strive to amuse if he is earnest to instruct. I 
bad the example of the Chinese before me, who tie rockets 
to the end of their rough bamboo spears, and give impulse 
to the weapon while they make their arrows sparkle as 

thev fly. 

G. W. C. 
2, Brick Court, Temple, 
Aztgust 23, 1858. 



CONTENTS. 



PiiEFAca .. .• ,. .. .. .. Pages v. — xxiii^ 

CHAPTER I. 

THE JOUENEY OUT. 

The Aden nears Hongkong — A Glance backwards to the Desert — 
The Pyramids — Aden — Ceylon — A Nocturnal Visit — Penang — First' 
View of a Chinese Population — The Penang Waterftill — Advantages and 
Disadvantages of Penang as a Sanatorium — Singapore 1 — 1> 

CHAPTER 11. 

HONGKONG. 

Appearance of the Island — First Impressions of the City of Victoria 
— Difficulty in obtaining Quarters — Precautions — Aspect of Victoria 
City — Ships in the Harbour — Expectations of a Junk-hunt — The 
Rakvjh 9—15 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BATTLE OF FATSHAN. 

The Affair of Escape Creek — Preparations for Fatshan — The Coro- 
^landeVs Departure from Hongkong — Passage up the Canton River — 
Scenery and Objects — Chuenpee, Yfantung Islands, and the Bogue 
Forts — Tiger Island — Major Kearney — The Sawshee Channel — The 
Hecond Ear Anchorage — Fleet assembled there— Captured Junks — 
Confidence of the Chinese — Chinese Pilot — The Blenheim Passage — 
The Bar — Tlie Fire-ship Boom — Fatshan Branch, and View of intended. 
Battle-field — Macao Fort — View of the Enemy's Fort and Fleet — ■ 
DititanL View of the City of Canton — The Chitiese are working or* 
Gough Fort — Description of the Scene of the Fatshan Operations — 
Plan of the intended Operations — The Coromcmdel weighs anchor 
before daylight of the 1st of June — Advance to the Fort — The Gun- 
boats — The Row-boats — Storming the Fort — The Attack on the Junks 
— Destruction of the Main Fleet — Keppel's Fight further up the 
river — Conflagration of the Junks after the battle — Admiral Kejjpel's 
Account of the Battle — Promotions 15 — 43- 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

OHAPTEE IV. 

AFTER THE BATTLE. 

Trial of Commodore Keppel for Loss of the Raleigh — Honourable 
Acquittal — Visit to the Wounded of Fatshan — Preparations for 
Beception of Lord Elgin — List of Casualties at Escape Creek and 
Fatshan Pages 43 — 48 



CHAPTER V. 

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS. 

Diversion of the Chinese Expedition to India — Speculations as to 
Sufficiency of our present Force — Conduct of Yeh — Difficulty of 
obtaining Information as to Progress of Eebellion — Wang, the Chinese 
Admiral — Incidents of the War — Rumours from Home — Foolish Talk 
in England about the Poisoned Bread 48 — 56 

CHAPTER VI. 

IMPRESSIONS OF HONGKONG. 

Want of Telegraphic Communication — Victoria City — Compradors 
— Extortion of Chinese Mandarins from British Subjects — Canton 
English — Climate of Hongkong — Sanitary Condition of its Inhabi- 
tants — Flora and Fauna — Social Qualities of the English Residents 
- — Rumour of Abdication of the Chinese Emperor 5G — 65 

CHAPTER VII. 

HONGKONG AND MACAO. 

x4.rrival of Lord Elgin — Sanitary State of Hongkong — Insecurity of 
its Waters — Eli Boggs, the Pirate — Necessity for Disarming the 
Junks— Macao — The Wreck of the Raleigh — Killing Time at Victoria 
— Lord Elgin's intended Journey to the North — Remarks upon the 
Policy of such a Proceeding — Indian Ti'oops for China — Strategic 
CapalDilities of Canton — Canton must be captured — Lord Elgin's 
Answer to the Merchants' Address Gb — 7& 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LORD ELGIN'S DEPARTURE FOR CALCUTTA. 

Diplomatic Conferences — Hongkong Rumours — Resolution of Lord 
Elgin to proceed to Calcutta — Reflections upon the Policy to be 
pm-sued towards China — Departure of the Shannon and the 
Pearl 79 — 84 



CONTENTS. XXVll 

CHAPTER IX. 

A VOYAGE TO THE JTORTH. 

Leaving Hongkong Harbour — Scenery of the China Seas — Swachow 
— Nanioa — Amoy Pages 84 — 92 

CHAPTER X. 

THE NORTH. 

The Mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang — The Emily Jane Opiura-ship 
— Approach to Shanghai — Shangai Statistics — Environs — The Baby 
Tower — ^Infanticide — Progress of the Rebellion 92 — 102 

CHAPTER XI. 

A JOURNEY INLAND. - 

Preparations — My Souchau l^oat — Environs of Shanghai — The 
Wang-poo River — The Pagoda — View from the Pagoda — Musings — 
Night on the Wangpoo — A Chinese Physician — His Opinion of the 
Rebels — The Christian Missionaries and the Rebels — Up the Wang- 
poo — Canals and Great Cities — Kiahing — Keashin — We enter upon the 
Imperial Canal — Irrigation -wheels — Fishing Cormorants — Scenes on 
the Banks of the Imperial Canal — Imperial Grain-junks — Distant 
View of Hangchow 102 — 116 

CHAPTER XII. 

HANGCHOW AND ITS SUBURBS. 

The '' Ta Kwan," or "Great Custom-house" — Difficulty of Enter- 
ing Hangchow — The Sehoo Lake — Buddhist Temples — The "Yun 
Lin "—The Philosophy of the Buddhists— The Ten Gods of Hell— 

The "Do-Nothings" — TheTaoists — The Confucians — Apathy of the 
Chinese in Religious Matters — Entry into Hangchow — Interior of 
the City — Journey onwards — Arrival at Ningpo — Reflections upon 
this Journey 116—129 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE NINGPO MASSACRE. 

Commercial Character of Ningpo — Piracy — Massacre of the Portu 
guese Pirates by Cantonese Pirates — Political Occurrences. . 129 — 134 

CHAPTER XIV. 

CEUSAN. 

Voyage from Ningpo to Chusan — The River Yung — A Night in ••* 
Joss-house — Chinghai — Chusan Harbour — No Guns in the Batteries 



XXVlll CONTENTS. 

— Aspect of the Island — May be re-occupied without Resistance — 
A Typhoon Pages 134—142 



CHAPTER XV. 

DIPLOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 

Arrival of Count Putiatin, the Russian Ambassador — Attitude 
of Russia towards Cliina — Reports from the Interior of Canton City — 
Defenceless State of the City of Nin^rpo — System of Purchase in 
the Army invented by tlie Cliinese — English and French Ambas- 
sadors expected at Shanghai — The Pekin Gazette adopts Yeh's Policy 
towards Foreigners at Shanghai 142 — lct> 

CHAPTER XVI. 

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS. 

Prospects of the Silk Trade — Disturbances in the Silk Districts — 
Tea — Opium — Little Panics at Hongkong — Lord Elgin abandons his 
Intention of Proceeding immediately to Pekin — Sir F. Nicholson's 
Observations on the late Typhoon — Practical Deduction as to the 
Desirability of Chusan Harbour 156 — 16'2 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE BRITISH IMPOET TRADE INTO CHINA. 

Geograjihical View — Population — Balance of Trade — Silk Exports 
to China from 1S39 to 1857 — Remarks on these Statistics — The Opium 
Trade — Increase of Quantity and Decrease of Value of Silver — 
Reasons alleged for the Paucity of British Exports — Examination 
of these Reasons — Table of Chinese Transit Duties — The Question 
of the Existence of Diflferential Duties in China discussed — The 
Author's Four Reasons for Unsatisfactory Condition of Export Trade 
to China — Imaginary Voyage up the Yang-tse Kiang — Conclusion 
of this Inquiry 162—209 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

FAREAVELL TO SHANGHAI. 

Intelligence is received of Intended Operations against Canton — 
The Author prepares to return to the South — Anticipates that 
future Proceedings in the North will become necessary — Has- 
gathered Information with a View to these Proceedings — How Pekin 
is fed — Interruption of Inland Transit for Rice — Present Practice of 
Conveyance by Sea — Supplies may be intercepted — Relations between 
the Russian and Chinese Governments — Description of Chinese Life 
at Siianghai — The Coolies — The Custom-house — The Toutai's Suite — 
The European Inspectors of Customs — A Funeral Procession — The 



CONTENTS. XXIX 

Chinese B3^standers — The Operation of producing small Feet described 
— A Chinese Marriage — The Shanghai Tea-gardens — Conjurers and 
Ventriloquists — Curio-shops and Miniature-painters — Departure from 
■Slianghai — Arrival at Hongkong — Hongkong News . . Parjes 209 — 228 

CHAPTER XIX. 

PREPARATIONS FOR CANTON". 

Arrival of the American Plenipo — Proposed Course of Proceeding 
towards Yeh — Hongkong Rumours — Arrival of a Brigade of Marines 
— The Gunboats — Adhesion of the French — The Americans looh on 
■ — Target Practice — Lord Elgin's Reconnaissance up the Canton River 
— Distant View of Canton — Whampoa — The French at their An- 
clioi-age — French Theatricals — Return of Count Putiatin — The Japanese 
and the Presentation Steamer — News of the Death of Mr. Beale, 
of Shanghai 228—235 



CHAPTER XX. 

A CHINESE DINNER. 

How Christians sometimes eat — A Chinaman's Aptitude for Cookery 
— My Cook at Hongkong — The Food of the Labouring Class — Of 
the Beggars — Of the Middle Classes — The Cookshops — " The Gallery 
of the Imperial Academician" at Ningro — Description of a Dinner 
given by the Author at that Hotel 235—245 

CHAPTER XXI. 

AGRICULTURE IN CHINA. 

Soil of the Great Plains — The best Way of seeing the Agriculture of 
a Country is to shoot over it — Pheasant-shooting — Cleanness of Crops 
— Nature of the Crops — No Beast-feeding — Manure — Art of Agricul- 
ture practised under different Conditions in China 245 — 251 

CHxiTER XXIL 

WAITING EOK FORCES. 

The Flag-ship moves up to Tiger Island — Departure of General 
Ashburnham and Staff — Indifference at Home — Preparations — Wait- 
ing for the Adelaide and Assistance — Attitude of the Four Powerx 
— The American Frigate Minnesota — Lord Elgin's Demand upon Yeh 
— Remarks upon the changed Course of Proceedings — Author's Expec- 
tation that we shall be in Canton before the end of the Year — Mr. Wade 
discovers ''The Hall of Pati-iotism and Peace" — The Grand Master 
of this Lodge is flogged — List of Ships in the Chinese Waters — Corre- 
spondence between Lord Elgin and Yeh 251 — 270 



XXX CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE XXXIII. 

PEEE TRANSIT THSOUGH CHINA. 

Necessity of Free Intercourse — Export Duties on Tea — Land Tax — 
Trnnsit Duty — Increase of Duties — Origin of the Increase — Detention 
of Tea Cargo-boats — Silk Export Dues — Magnitude of Woochang — 
Capacity of China Pages 270—275 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

OCCUPATION OF HONAN. 

American Diplomacy — The Minvesota — Artillery Practice at Hong- 
Icong — The Coolie Corps — Death of Colonel Lugard — Arrival of the 
u4cZe^a?c?e— General Order to the Fleet — Proclamation to the People 
of Canton — Early Intelligence of the Chinese — Amount of the At- 
tacking Force — Delivery of Despatches — Occupation of Honan — 
Chinese Attack upon a Boat's Crew — Yeh's Answer 275 — 297 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE BOMBAEDMENT OF CANTON. 

Advance to Canton Eiver — Flight of the Eiver Population — The 
Ships take up their Positions — Honan — Quarters — Canton from the 
Honan Pack-houses — Arrival of the Troops — The Mosquitoes and the 
"Browns" — Church Service in u, Pack-house — A Peep from the 
main-truck of the Nimrod into Yeh's Yamun — A Reconnaissance to 
the Western Side of Canton — Another to the Eastern Side — Health 
of the Troops — Working at the Batteries — Proclamations — A Pla- 
carded Mandarin — Plan of Attack — Captain Edgell — The Morning 
of the Blockade — The First Shell — The Bombardment — Debarkation 
of the Troops — Capture of the East Fort— The Night Scene of the 
Bombardment — The Morning of the Assault — The Walls and Forts 
are taken 297—322 

CHAPTER XXVJ. 

CAPTURE OF CANTON. 

Bivouac on the Joss-house Floor — Hall's Terrace — Description of 
the Landing-place — The Wounded — The Coolies — The French — Dan- 
gerous Passage from the Landing-place to the East Gate — Seventy 
Hours of Rain — The Men upon the Walls — Pork and Fish — A 
Peculiarity of Instinct in Chinese Pigs — The Point of Escalade — 
The Morning of the 29th— The Escalade— Death of Captain Bate- 
Affair between the Tartar Troops and Colonel Holloway's Brigade 
under the Walls — Loss in Killed and Wounded — The Forts are blown 
up — Apathy of the Chinese — The Troops enter the City — Capture of 
Peh-kwei — The Treasury is taken — The French capture the Tartar 



CONTENTS. XXXI 

General— The Chase after Yeh — The Capture of Yeh — His Behaviour — 
Interrogation of the Mandarin Prisoners — Yeh is sent on board the 
Iniexihle — Peh-kwei and the Tartar General are re-instated in Office 
— Ceremony of Installation — List of Casualties Pages 322 — 352 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

INSIDE CANTON. 

The Blockade Question — The Interior of the City— Curiosity-shops 
— Street of the Triumphal Arches — The Nine-storied Pagodas — 
General Character of the Houses and Yamuns — First Kight in the 
Governor's Yamun — The Three Commissioners — Their Court — The 
Depots of Arms — The Loss of the Chinese during the Siege — 
Dearth of Interpreters — Concealed Treasure in Colonel Hooker's 
Quartei's — A Shi-ewd Buddhist Priest — Deportment of Peh-kwei and 
Yeh — Proposition to send Yeh to Calcutta 352 — 364 

CHAPTER XXVIIL 

A WALK ABOUT CANTON. 

Intricacies of Canton City — The Governor's Yamun — The Commis- 
sioner's Court — The Tartar Yamun — The Treasury — The Execution- 
ground — Manner of the Executions — The Euins of Yeh's Yamun — 
The Site of the Old Eactories— Temples— The Tartar City— The Fatee 
Gardens — Puntinqua's House 364 — 371 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE CANTON PKISONS. 

Peh-kwei's Proclamation — Description of a Chinese Prison — The 
Yai'd of the Second Prison — Horrible Scene in one of the surrounding 
Dens — Tlie Paralyzed Child — The European Prison — Description — 
Traditions of the Prison — Death by Poison — Lord Elgin's Inter- 
ference — Prison Book-keeping 371 — 37& 

CHAPTER XXX. 

TEADB AND DIPLOMACY. 

Arrival of the Sepoys — Fracas between them and the French — 
Eowqua at Home — Estimate of Amount of Stock of Teas — Opinions 
of the Chinese Merchants assembled at Howqua's — Blockade raised — 
Police — The Chinese New Year in Canton — Site of the New Factories 
— ^Adieu to Canton — Diplomatic Occurrences — The Americans and 
Russians join with the English and Frencb — The Four Plenipoten- 
tiaries prepare to go North 378 — 385 



XXXU CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE XXXT. 

ADIEU TO CHINA. 

Lord Elgin's Prospects in the North — Celebration of the Chinese 
New Year at Hongkong — Hongkong Races — Our True Policy in 
dealing with the Chinese — The Sinologues and their Prejudices — 
The Chinese Teachers — The Author leaves China in company witli 
Yeh Parjcs SSj— 89S 

CHAPTEPv XXXII. 

COXVERSxVTIONS WITH TEH. 

Description of Yeh — The Different Portraits of him — His Behaviour 
when taken — His Early Suspicions — His Private Lite— His Diet — 
His Religion — His Dirtiness — Departure in the Inflexible — Sea- 
sickness — His Account of the Executions of the Rebels — Is Yeh a 
Eatalist ? — His Reception of the Bishop of Victoria's Tracts — His 
Opinions on Dissection — His Knowledge in Geography and History 
— His Dislike of Competition — His Falsehood — Yeh's Account of 
his own Career — His Ignorance of Chinese Dialects — His Explana- 
tions of Chinese Philosophy — The Canton Affair — Yeh on Deck — 
Arrival in the Hooghly— Lands at Fort William 396—428 

CHAPTER XXXIIL 

YEH AT CALCUTTA. 

Conversations with Mr. Layard — Contempt for Indian Potentates, 
iind for Company's Servants — Yeh takes to Reading the Debates — His 
Account of the Murder of the French Missionary — Reception of the 
News of his Degradation 428 — 432 

Conclusion 432 

Appendix 433—445 

Index 447 



CHINA. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE JOURNEY OUT. 

The Aden nears Hongkong — A Grlance Eackwards to the Desert — 
The Pyramids — Aden — Ceylon — A Nocturnal Visit — Penang — First 
View of a Chinese Population — The Penang Waterfall — Advantages 
and Disadvantages of Penang as a Sanatorium — Singapore. 

On Board the Aden, May 21, 1857. 
To-morrow, we are told, we sliall see the coast of China. 
By " we " I mean that portion of the Chinese expedition 
which pursues its straightforward course to Hongkong, for 
General Ashburnham and his suite left us at Suez, and go 
round by Bombay. The little sharp-nosed Aden has made 
a passage like the flight of a bird. She is rather lively and 
sportive, and even now is playfully resenting the affront of 
a passing squall in a manner which makes writing a diffi- 
culty ; but every one on board agrees, that -for speed and 
beauty she leaves nothing to be desired. When the north- 
east monsoon blows hard in our teeth, and passing squalls 
deluge us with rain and stifle us with spray, and drive us 
below, and when the ports are screwed tight, and we sufib- 
cate in the sultry night, and are rattled about in our cabins 
like pills in a pill-box, we groan heavily, and even " captains 
and colonels, and knights-at-arms " are sad and miserable. 
But let us still, although longing to escape from her, speak 
well of the ship that bears us swiftly to the land, and let 
us speak Avell also of the careful and courteous sailor who 
commands her, and watches her as a father watches the 
gambols of his favourite child. And now the events of 

B 



23 CHINA. 

•what is facetiously called the " overland journey " are 
nearly over. It is such a pleasant thing to have climbed 
the Great Pyramid"^ under a noonday sun, and looked upon 
the Libyan desert witli expectation of an impending sun- 
stroke. It is well to have lain gasping on the deck as the 
ship glided through that breezeless Red Sea, and to have a 
looked languidly on the range of mount Sinai and the port 
of Mecca. t It is a comfort to know that Aden looks like 
a mighty mass of coke, with huts and fortifications scattered 
about among its crevices ; and it is wonderful to have heard 
military men quartered there, say they rather like it. The 
track, however, is so beaten, and the journey so common, 
that even your companions don't talk of the slimy wonders 
of the Nile. Their talk is of the relative accommodation of ' 
the different ships, and the mercy of Providence which pre- 
serves six stout men from suffocation in the journey through 
a fiery desert, close-packed in a van whose utmost capa- 
city appeared at first sight equal to holding four good-sized 
children. But there is no really pleasurable sensation until, 

* The overland journey lias been so often described, that I did not 
dwell upon the circumstances ; but I have never seen full warning given 
of the disagreeable things to be encountered in ascending the 
Pyramids. If you would not lose your passage, you must do it in a 
huny, and, by carriage, ferry boat, and donkey gallop, use your utmost 
expedition. But this is not the difficulty ; nor is the constant climbing 
up the great blocks under the full blaze of the sun. The Arabs of the 
Pyramids form all the ten plagues of Egypt rolled up into one ; they 
surround you, they infest you, they press upon you, and their cry, their 
chorus, their unintermitted shout is "Baksheish." I travelled across 
the desert in the company of an American merchant-captain, noted 
among his compatriots for being the shrewdest and, as some said, the 
least scrupulous Yankee who ever kept a crew upon low diet. I * 
found out that he, upon a former occasion, had been up the Pyramid, 
and I asked him how much it cost him to keep the Arabs at bay. He 
said "I never told that to any man yet, and I guess I never shall." 
There was a story, that they had held him over one of those dark, 
uncomfortable-looking fissures inside, and made him empty his pockets 
to ransom himself. 

f We were fortunate in coasting along the eastern shores, and had 
these most interesting scenes in view for many hours. We saw 
also, in the harbour of Suez, one of those grotesque and fragile pilgrim- 
boats bound for the port of Mecca, and crowded with animated filth. 
But these were casual pieces of good fortune ; on my return voyage I 
sav/ nothing but the particularly blue waters of the Red Sea. 



THE OVERLAND JOURNEY. 3 

after that dreadful passage of tlie 'Red Sea between the 
calcined shores of " Araby the Blest " and Africa, and after 
tlie hot pilgrimage across the Indian Ocean, Ceylon appears, 
clad in fall tropical green, with her domes of broad plan- 
tain leaves, her far-sweeping forests of cocoas and mangoes, 
and her inland highlands, which promise streams and shadow. 
I should like to dwell in lengthened description upon Ceylon. 
All that we see of forest beauty at Windsor, or Bichmond, 
or Blenheim, or Beau desert, or Cannock Chase — all that v/e 
have of hill and valley, winding rivers, forest glades, and 
bright green turf-rides, is here. Added to all this, Ceylon 
has the mighty vegetation of the East ; and the savages, 
stalking along in the sun, clad only in a scant girdle of some 
striking colour, are so swart, so lusty, and so picturesque ! 
But Ceylon has nothing to do with the Chinese expedition, 
except to give its leaders a few hours' respite. So, off to 
shipboard in a canoe sixteen inches broad, which, despite its 
outrigger of bamboo, seems but a man-trap, invented in the 
interest of the sharks. 

Our course is across the broad, unquiet Bay of Bengal. 
Again we lose sight of land, journeying day after day with- 
out apparent progress, in that eternal blue circle which 
seems to realize the mathematician's definition of space as 
'•a circle whose centre is everywhere, and whose circum- 
ference is noYvdiere," — without an event throughout the day^ 
except that ever and anon a shoal of flying fish spring up 
from the smooth ocean, and go off in radii, dotting and 
skimming, their transparent wings glittering in the sun, and 
then splashing into the sea again at a safe distance from the 
dolphin which is prowling after them below. One of these 
poetical creatures flew through my port, and came flop upon 
me in my sleep a few nights since ; the cold, wriggling, 
prickly, gasping thing gave me a more horrible fright in the 
dark than I ever felt in my life. 

The Straits of Malacca are not so narrow that we can 
often see the land, but on the morning of the 13th of May 
we enter a British possession, which I must say something 
about. 

After long steaming in smooth water in the neighbour- 
hood of well- wooded islands, enjoying reputations for piracy, 

B 2 



4: CHINA. 

cannibalism, flying monkeys, gigantic serpents, and other 
amenities, we at length enter a narrow strait; On tlie left 
we have the lofty mainland of Siam rising from woody 
lowlands, and stretching away, peak over peak, till their 
outlines grow dimmer and more dim, and the eye can no 
more reflect them. On the right, about two miles distant, 
lies an island covered with palms and thick underwood ot 
spice-trees, the huge cocoanut-trees rising like domes on the 
tops of hills, and bending also over the margin of the sea. 
There are miniature bays, with a beach ol shining sand ; and 
white bungalows glitter through the foliage which shelters 
them from the fierce sun. Crowning an upland, rising to 
an altitude of 2,500 feet, is a flagstaff ; and our telescopes, 
aided by private information from the captain, tell us that 
it is the British flag which lags lazily, waiting for a breeze. 
As we steam rapidly along between the island and the 
mainland we enter a roadstead commanded by small vessels, 
and a town of low buildings, with a rude wooden pier, is on 
our right. Six hours on shore, for this is Penang, hereto- 
fore celebrated for its " lawyers," but destined perchance to 
be hereafter better known as the sanitary station of the 
Chinese expedition. 

Six hours on shore. Tour sturdy Malays ply their paddles, 
and impel their cranky canoe rapidly to the pier. We are 
deposited among a population of Chinamen. At the en- 
trance to the pier is a large supply of little carriages, called 
palanquins, but resembling tiny double-seated broughams, 
with sides and backs formed of Yenetian blinds ; each car is 
drawn by a pony, so small and so stout that the eyes of com- 
missaries and purveyors were at once arrested, and such dili- 
gent inquiries are made as to the number and value of these 
useful-looking quadrupeds that I make haste to hire one for 
the nonce, lest they should all have the broad arrow put 
upon their shoulders and be spirited away before we had 
had our jaunt. To dive into one of these i3alanquins was 
indeed a first necessity, for pith hats and turban cloths are 
no match for these sun- rays. 

Penang is not quite a metropolis. Its streets are not 
very many, and its buildings are not among the loftiest. 
Square white pillars, eight feet high, support a roof of tilea 



PENANG. » 

or a thatcli of dried plantain leaves. Under these tlie 
Chinaman Avorks at his trade, or sells his mangoes, or pine- 
apples, or plantains, or, greatest of all, his rnangosteins. 
Even the Parsee storekeeper exhibits his bottles in a 
place of similar architecture. Fortnum and Mason's shop 
struggling with the exigencies of a barbarous country, will 
describe our Parsee friend, from whom we buy some very 
curious old sherry — very curious, and then proceed to chaffer 
with the Chinamen. 

It is our first meeting with the Chinese as a population, 
and the impression they make is not favourable. It is not 
because they are universally naked to the waist, or because 
they outrage the common decencies of extortion by asking 
threepence for a green orange, and as much for a mango ; 
the Malay who runs with your palanquin or rows you ashore 
in his canoe, is quite as naked, except on his face, for he 
wears nothing more than two handkerchiefs, one round his 
head and the other round his loins, and he is rather more 
importunate. But we resent the literal, matter-of-fact 
identity of these Chinamen with the other Chinamen whom 
we have seen carved in ivory or painted on fans and tea- 
caddies. After 8,000 miles of sea-sickness and suffocation, 
one expects to see something more than the stupid, expres- 
sionless pigs' eyes and bald faces, and the same attitude of 
stolid, grave conceit which we fancy to be a caricature 
when we see it on a willow-pattern plate, but find to be 
true vegetating Chinese life when we see it at Penang. 

There is one lion at Penang — it is the waterfall. Thither 
every one goes who has not duties that lead him elsewhere. 
The ride thither is through the environs of the town, 
replete with smart bungalows in shady places, then along 
the coast, then up a beautiful valley, where every spice- tree 
grows, and many a rare flower we prize in England springs 
up a weed. The hills that close this valley in, are clad with 
forest fruit-trees. Occasionally we meet a palanquin like 
our own, and inside thereof are four naked Chinamen 
solemnly taking an airing. The road is as good as the 
Holyhead Poad is, or was ; but it ends abruptly at the wall of 
a nutmeg plantation. The sun is high and the shade is 
scanty, but they who would see the waterfall must climb the 



6 CHINA. 

steep on foot ; I was one of tliose who adventured tliis. It was 
quite as much as could be safely endured, altliough we tried 
to lighten the toil by repeating the Chinamen's stories of 
cobras in the long grass and tigers in the high jungle. 

Arrived at the foot of the principal fall, some of ns 
crawled in under the scant shadow of a " Penang lawyer," 
others stripped, and sat in an eddy up to our noses, and 
others stood under the edge of the fall. We drank our sherry 
in this state, and the conversation became so lively that a 
young turtle rose from the bottom of the not very bright 
pool, flapping himself leisurely up to the surface, and putting 
out his loug neck to ascertain what was going on, and why 
those white bodies were standing in the spray of the de- 
scending water. He had nearly enjoyed the honour of 
being the first captive made by the Chinese expedition, or 
rather, perhaps, by the civilians who are the fellow-pas- 
sengers thereof, but by a masterly retreat he managed to 
save himself in some mysterious cavity of the rocks. 

There we passed four of our six hours ashore. E,eturning 
to Penang, we filled our stomachs and our pockets ; and 
some filled baskets with pines and mangoes. I and another 
managed to obtain one mangostein. We divided it. It was 
the only ripe mangostein in the town.'"' Great was the fruit 
debauch that night on board the Aden. 

I try to give some notion of Penang, because it is very 
probable that it may soon become a spot of interest to 
English sympathies. There is at present a strong inclina- 
tion in high places to make Penang the sanitarium of this 
expedition. The proper authorities have been making 
inquiries as to its salubrity and its position with respect to 
supplies ; and I am told that, so far as these inquiries have 
gone, the results have been favourable. Of course, I can 
individually have no opinion upon the subject. I can only 
say that, upon a six-hour view, the island is very delightful 
to look upon ; that its acclivities enable you to choose your 
own climate, and that we who sat in a cold stream, under a 

* We had abundance of this fruit afterwards brought up to Hong- 
kong from the Straits. I think its delights are rather over-rated. 
The finest fruit in the world is the Amoy pumalow. 



SINGAPORE. 7 

hot sun, and then ate immoderately of fruit, did so %vith 
entire impunity. 

On the other hand, Penang is only five degrees north of 
the Line, and is neady 2,000 miles from Hongkong. 
Under the most favourable circumstances, a steamer will 
take ten days, and during the south-west monsoon, which 
will blow from June to October, a steam transport will take 
twelve daj^s, to pass from Hongkong to Penang. ■•' The 
island is fifteen miles long, by eight broad. 

We steamed away from Penang, and on the morning of 
the 13th came in sight of the Bay of Islands. We ran in 
among the seventy islets, and among a crowd of shipping 
lying secure under their shelter. At the bottom of the bay 
lies Singapore. A town of low houses, crowded together 
on the left-hand side of a small creek ; a long line of smart 
bungalows, stretching along the margin of the shore on the 
other side of the creek, and with an " esplanade " in front 
of them ; undulating hills in the background, covered with 
foliage, among them, and dominating the town, the Go- 
vernor's Hill, whereon stands the governor's bungalow, — 
such is Singapore from the sea. To the extreme left is the 
new harbour — a costly and magnificent series of works, 
erected, I am told, by the Peninsular and Oriental Company. 
We cannot see from the harbour how the creek pierces, in a 
winding course, far up into the country ; how it winds 
through mango-groves and paddy-fields ; how it occasionally 
expands into a shallow lake, which at low water becomes a 
swamp ; nor can we see that throughout its course it has 
wretched Chinese habitations rising from its surface, and 
resting upon piles driven into its oozy bottom. 

There is no special reason why I should expend time and 
space upon a description of Singapore — a description wLich, 
with my very imperfect opportunities of observation, must 
necessarily be very feeble — unless, indeed, it should happen 
to become a naval and mihtary depot, and a basis for future 
operations in this expedition. Every one knows that it is a 
place of great commerce. Every one, however, does not 
know that it contains a population of 70,000 Chinamen and 
not above 300 Chinawomen ; or that a horrible demoraliza- 

* These considerations prevailed, and the project was al)andoned. 



O CHINA. 

tion exists amongst these wretches of the male sex, conse- 
quent, perhaps, upon this great disparity — a demoralization 
which misrht call down fire from heaven. Two weak resfi- 
ments of sepoys, with scarcely any European officers upon 
duty with them, a few guns on the Governor's Hill, with not 
even an earthwork to protect the gunners, are not very 
satisfactory defences against a migratory and frequently 
insurgent population of 70,000, who for the most part have 
no interest in the place ; but who come here for four or five 
years to accumulate gains, and go l^ack to China carryin^ 
English silver, hatred of the English name, and their own 
horrible vices with them ; and to be succeeded by others as 
evil as themselves. But the Singapore people say, " What 
is to be done 1 The Malays will not work, and the China- 
men will. We must have our cargoes cleared, and we must 
get our repairs done." Others think that it is quite time 
this place was made a Crown colony, and properly gar- 
risoned.* I talked much with the Malays, who do not 
love the Chinamen, but who all declared that in case of a 
contest they would feel no confidence, notwithstanding the 
sepoys, — " Chinamen too many." 

During oui* stay on shore, a party of Englishmen, properly 
introduced, paid a visit to one Ching Tsing, the chief China 
merchant in the town, and the owner of a very prominently- 
situated house, just outside the Chinese quarter. The party 
was received by the Chinaman and his mother with great 
courtesy. His house was simple in its furniture, but adorned 
with knicknacks that would fill many an English fine lady 
with envy. Sweatmeats and fruit were produced, and 
Ching Tsing was so obliging as to say to one of the military, 
that he wished us all success, for we were going to defend 
his property. In the middle of the visit, a silken package 
with a sort of thatch over it was brought in by two beai-ers, 
and put down on the floor ; it looked like an exaggerated 
handkerchief, gathered up at the corners, and covered at the 
knotted corners by a wicker dish-cover. The guests thought 
it was probably a dish of meat or a new course of preserves. 
When the thatch was removed, at the bottom of the 

* It must be remembere'l that at this time tbei'e was no talk of 
deposing the East-India Directors. 



APPROACH TO HONGKONG. 9 

bundle was seen a small human figure, squatted upon its 
haunches. The little thing gradually picked itself up, came 
out of its bundle, and fell upon its knees before the master 
of the house, putting up its hands in the posture of a sup- 
pliant. The Chinaman rose from his seat, waved his hand 
with dignity, and the little lady arose. As she did so, he 
said to his European guests, " My wife." My wife made 
a slight salutation around, and then, retiring into her 
handkerchief again, was covered up, and was borne from the 
room as she entered. 

The guests were a little surprised to hear afterwards that 
this magnificent husband was the chief of the recent Chinese 
insurrections, and that one of the guns upon the Governor's 
Hill had been laid to command this particular house. 



CHAPTER 11. 

HONGKONG. 

Appearance of the Island — Pirst Impi-essions of the City of Victoria — 
Difficulty in obtaining Quarters — Precautions — Aspect of Victoria 
City — Ships in the Harbour — Expectations of a Junk-Hunt — The 
Raleigh. 

Honglcong, May 22. 

After long looking out for the "Asses' Ears," our first 
promised landmark, the rock appears, at the very point 
where it had been reckoned upon. We steamed on and on 
into an archipelago of islet rocks, with a sort of green mildew 
upon them, but no mark of habitation or of animals. Oh ! 
where is the beautiful vegetation of Ceylon and Penang ? 
Then an officer points out, not far a-head, the island of Hong- 
kong, with Victoria Peak. It appears to us an irregular 
line of broken, barren highlands, almost mixed up with the 
higher mountains of the main-land, which have clouds 
skimming under their summits, and a large pale sun setting 
behind them. A thin mist hangs around. An enthusiastic 
Scotchman says it is something like the western islands of 
Scotland, but not so fertile as the main-land. Every one 



10 CHINA. 

else, as the short twilight was vanishing and the mist deep- 
ened, asked his neighbour, " Is this what ' we have come 
10,000 miles to see?" And then it became dark, and the 
ship steamed on, and changed her course, and we became 
conscious of the lights of many ships and distant shore 
lights, such as we see from the train as we pass through 
Bath at night ; and then, " Stand by to let go the anchor," 
and we were arrived at Hongkong. 

May 24. 

Twenty-four hours in British China have not enabled me 
to do much towards examining and correcting the ideas I 
have obtained from diligent jDerusal of Pautier, Bazin, 
Staunton, Ellis, Hue, Fortune, Davis, Montgomery Martin, 
I'Abbe Grosier, Stanislas Julien, and a host of others. Bear 
with me, therefore, if, in the intervals of the study of the 
great problems before me, I send you only a few scraps of 
news and a few vague first impressions. 

My earliest impression undoubtedly is, that our facetious^ 
European friends who advise us to " go to Hongkong " have 
not an accurate knowledge of the spot. A gentleman who 
should "go to Hongkong" in the present state of affairs, 
although he may have his pocket full of dollars, is not un- 
likely to be obliged to sleep upon the pavement of Queen 
Street, and will be indebted to the protection of the Malay 
guard if his throat be not cut before the morning. It is a 
town of capital houses, but its powers of accommodation are 
not capable of indefinite expansion. The flight from Canton 
and other causes have filled it. General Garrett and his 
staff", who might reasonably have anticipated some prepara- 
tions for their reception, found it convenient to sleep on 
board the steamer, and were glad to shelter themselves 
where they might. The general, on the day after his arrival, 
with great difficulty got a room at an inn, and his suite 
were happy to avail themselves of the hospitality of the 
Hongkong Club — an establishment to which we cannot be 
too grateful ; and if there is any gratitude in Pall Mall, the 
military clubs should be open to every member when he 
visits London, in requital of good offices rendered in utmost 
need. These soldiers, however, are all old campaigners, who 



WANT OF QUARTERS IN VICTORIA. 11 

have reminiscences of the winter before Sebastopol, and will 
soon reduce matters here to their proper bearing. Their 
measures have already been taken with great promptitude ; 
but, unless the aspect of affairs is very rapidly changed, 
General Ashburnham will have to take up his quarters in a 
half-built storehouse, and Lord Elgin will certainly be 
obliged to sleep in the harbour. For myself, I think I 
ought publicly to return my thanks to Mr. Walker, the agent 
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, for it was by no 
common expenditure of time and interest that he obtained 
for me a single room at a price not much above what a 
lodging in Eegent Street would cost in the London season. 
In other respects, Hongkong is a place where a turkey and a 
ham costs £5, and where a dollar, whose par value is 45. 2cl, 
costs 5s. in English bills or gold. It has some other pecu- 
liarities which strike a new comer. If you dine with a 
merchant here, you notice that when your host takes leave 
of you at his outer door, he has a Malay soldier standing 
sentinel in his hall, with a loaded musket. He explains to 
you, also, that the house is so arranged that all those long- 
tailed domestics who waited at dinner are, or can be, shut 
off from that part of the house in which the Europeans 
sleep. If your host should accompany you a few steps 
towards your own domicile, he is careful to buckle his re- 
volver round his waist, and — say it is nine o'clock — he is 
uncomfortable if he goes ten paces v,^ithout being challenged 
by an armed patrol. 

Victoria, the capital city, which we now inhabit, is built 
at the base of a sugar-loaf mountain, and extends, perhaps, 
about two miles from end to end. The bungalows generally 
consist of three rooms about forty feet long and fifteen feet 
high, all opening upon a verandah, some bedrooms, and a 
set of detached offices for the Chinese. The pleasantest of 
these bungalows are those which are situated the highest up 
the hill, and which overlook the harbour and the enemy's 
country beyond. 

I passed this morning on the verandah of a friend's house, 
and we agreed that, to suggest to the European mind an idea 
of Yictoria and its scenery, we must imagine ourselves to be 
looking down upon a Scotch loch — Loch Lomond or Loch 



12 CHINA. 

Long will do. We must create by imagination a handsome 
city of light, airy houses upon the margin of the waters, and 
climbing up the hills. We must fill the lake with shipping 
of every nation, and we must pour over all the hills the glare 
of an Eastern sun. An English tourist in Scotland, who has 
imagination enough to make these corrections in his reminis- 
cences of the North, may fancy he has seen what I see from 
my friend's bungalow. Let lis look a little closer, and with 
the aid of a good glass. 

Li the harbour, besides the Chinese boats so comfortably 
fitted with their neat bamboo work, — besides, also, several 
large junks, with their great sightless eyes painted in the 
bows, their lofty sterns, and their mat sails, there is a fleet 
of sixty-four European merchant-vessels, whereof ten are 
steamers. The Yankee and the Dutch flags flaunt about 
with the Union Jack, for it is Sunday ; and every floating 
thing, from the Yankee Challenge, 2,030 tons, to the little 
British Squirrel steamer of 50 tons, rejoices in its display of 
nationality. 

But above and more important than these vehicles of 
opium and rice, ride the vessels of war. From the verandah 
of this bungalow we can count thirteen pennants. There 
lies the Calcutta, with her three tiers of guns and her 
admiral's flag ; and, dwindled into specks by comparison 
with her greatness, those saucy little gunboats with their 
two long guns each — the Bustard, the Forester, the Haughty, 
the Opossum, and the Staunch, — seem ready for any mischief. 
There is a French steamer also, and a French brig-of-war, 
flying their tri-colour ; and the Yankee steamer San Jacinto, 
with her fifteen long guns, adds the stars and stripes to this 
display of warlike force. The Acorn, the Elk, and the Bit- 
tern, brigs-of-war ; the Goromandel, the Fury, the Cruiser, 
the Hongkong, the Hornet, the Niger, and the Sir Charles 
Forhes, steamers ; the Starling, gunboat, and the Sihylle, ship, 
are gone up the Canton river, whither it is said that these 
gunboats will follow on Tuesday or Wednesday. Imperial 
junks have been discovered in several of the creeks, and a 
junk-hunt is imminent. Perhaps it may take place on 
Tuesday, which is the day fixed upon by the Governor to 
celebrate the Queen's birthday; perhaps it may be post- 



THE FLEET IN HONGKONG HAKBOUR. 13 

poned until that day has been loyally honoured with more 
peaceful cheers. There are not wanting, however, people 
who shake their heads and say that junk-hunting will be 
found a dangerous pastime, that the guns on board the 
junks are as heavy as those on board the gunboats, and it 
is whispered that white faces have been seen through the 
portholes. I hope to tell you something of all this from a 
nearer view by the next mail, but whether white or black, 
or copper-coloured, I doubt whether the crew of the Ealeigh, 
who are to man the boats, will see much of those faces when 
they get within hail. At long bowls, the Chinese will fight, 
and may do damage ; but, although we have taught them 
something, even those who shake their heads habitually do 
not imagine that they have yet learned to fight an English- 
man hand to hand. 

I mentioned the Raleigh. It seems now to be perfectly 
understood here that she was run ashore " according to Act 
of Parliament ; " that the rock was laid down in no chart, 
and was even unknown to the Chinese fishermen; and that 
the lead was going. It is a pointed rock — so pointed that 
it has not two square feet that will hold the lead, and ten 
fathoms of water close up to it. It is said that Caj)tain 
Keppel, whose misfortune every one commiserates, is to 
have an opportunity of exploding his annoyance by leading 
one of the intended junk-hunts. Cr^ptain Elliott is to lead 
the other. 

Meanwhile the Raleigh has settled into the mud. Some 
say that her guns and stores are to be removed, and that 
she is to be blown up ; others that a tender to get her up for 
40,000 dollars was unadvisedly refused j others that she is 
to be sold to the highest bidder : but all rumours tend to 
the same result — that the ship is gone, and that a great vic- 
tory will appear in the Pekin Gazette. 

All this time we have been standing upon the verandah 
enjoying the cool breeze and looking down upon the rich 
fleet of merchantmen and the strong fleet of men-of-war — 
opium, and silver, and silk, and pent-up thunders. We 
have given no thought to the " hostile shores " of China, yet 
just across is the land of the enemy. His rocky mountains 
seem to rise from behind the last line of shipping, and pro- 



14 CHINA. 

bably would be still more nearly approached by them but 
for a circlet of low rocks which rise like the crater of a 
volcano in the midst of the strait, letting the blue water, 
however, eddy in the hollow. At the foot of those lofty 
hills is an enemy's battery of four guns. "We can see the 
subjects of "the enemy" quarr3^iDg stone upon the shore : 
through my very powerful glass, I can even make out their 
features. But, although there is a great noise of firing 
among these sisterly ships, which are always saluting each 
other, and whose kisses are of the heartiest smacking sound, 
yet the four Chinese guns never join in the pastime. The 
braves of Mr. Commissioner Yeh bide their time until the 
ships be gone home, and the police of the town are dis- 
banded. " Rusticus expectat." 

Meantime, while the mandarins are issuing nonsensical 
proclamations against all who supply us barbarians with 
food, we are actually saving the Cantonese from starvation. 
Kice went up in price in the market of Hongkong 100 per 
cent, in 48 hours, and the rise was occasioned entirely by 
the demand at Canton. This wicked and rebellious city, 
which all men in these parts — English, American, Dutch, 
and Chinese, yes, Chinese — agree in .anathematizing, is now 
in the depth of suffering. The insurgents have stopped the 
rice countries to the east ; the locusts have destroyed all the 
crops in the west ; the English and Americans are buying 
up the rice from Siam and elsewhere ; and Canton is literally 
kept from starvation by the people whom they have driven 
out of their factories, and upon whose heads they have set 
prices not always justly estimated. If we were to blockade 
the river, we might produce an extent of misery in Canton 
which would reverse all authority, and expel Mr. Yeh with- 
out any application of force. But this would be very cruel 
and very useless. If we smite, the Chinaman must see the 
hand that smites, or he will not believe. " Sir," said a 
military man who is no mean authority, " you must blow 
your way through Canton at the point of the bayonet, and 
you must hold the city in the name of the three allied 
Powers." 

I have not time to pursue this fruitful topic, for the mail 
is now closing. The last morsel of news is, that Captain 



XEVv-S FFvOM FOO-CHOW-FOO. 15 

Barnard of Her Majesty's ship Eacehorse, has just returned 
from Foo-cliow-foo, and reports that some terrible fighting, 
or rather slaughter, has occurred among the Chinese above 
that city. Mutilated bodies in quantities of twenty and 
thirty at a time floated past the Racehorse as she rode at 
anchor. The supposition is, that the Imperialists have 
gained an important advantage, for the teas are now coming 
down from Foo-chow, which would seem to show that the 
impediment created by the troubles had ceased. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE BATTLE OF FATSHAN. 

The A£air of Escape Creek — Preparations for Fatshan — The Coro* 
mandel's Departure from Hongkong — Passage up the Canton 
Elver — Scenery and Objects — Chuenpee, AVantung Islands, and the 
Bogue Forts — Tiger Island — Major Kearney — The Sawshee Channel 
— The Second Bar Anchorage — Fleet assembled there — Captured 
Junks — Confidence of the Chinese — Chinese Pilot — The Blenheim 
Passage — The Bar — The Fire-ship Boom — Fatshan Branch, and 
View of intended Battle Field — Macao Fort — View of the Enemy's 
Fort and Fleet — Distant View of the City of Canton — The Chinese 
are working on Gough Fort — Description of the Scene of the 
Fatshan Operations — Plan of the Intended Operations — The Coro- 
mandel weighs anchor before daylight of the 1st of June — Advance 
to the Fort — The Gunboats — The Row-boats — Storming the Fort 
• — The Attack on the Junks — Destruction of the Main Fleet — 
Keppel's Fight further up the River — Conflagration of the Junks 
after the Battle — Admiral Keppel's Account of the Battle — 
Promotions. 

Hongkong, June 5. 
The Chinese fleet has been destroyed in two decisive 
engagements, but the sentiment of our navy has undergone 
an entire change in respect of these " timid " barbarians. 
More Englishmen have been killed and wounded in these 
two conflicts than were disabled before the walls of Acre. 

The first expedition was under Commodore Elliott, and 
the operations lasted during the 25th, 26th, and 27th of 
May. The second was under Commodores Keppel and 



16 CHINA. 

Elliott, commanded by the admiral in person. The first I 
can only relate from hearsay. 

If you will refer to the small chart of the Canton river, 
recently published by the Admiralty, and which, so far as it 
goes, is very correct, you will see four creeks marked as 
running from the Canton river eastward. The northern- 
most of these is Escape Creek ; next, to the south, is 
Tszekee Creek, which is, in fact, but part of Escape Creek ; 
about four miles further to the south is an entrance called 
Second Bar Creek, and four miles still southwards is a 
larger inlet called Sawshee Channel. Only the mouths of 
these four inlets are marked in the chart. They were sup- 
posed to communicate with each other further inland, but 
nothing certain was known upon the subject. 

About five miles up Escape Creek a large fleet of man- 
darin junks had lain for some time, and here it was that the 
ojDerations were commenced. 

On the morning of Monday, the 25th of May, Commodore 
Elliott, in the Hongkong ganboat, followed by the Bustard, 
the Staunch, the Starling, and the Forbes, and towing the 
boats and boats' crews of the Indexible, the Hornet, and 
the Tribune, steamed into the creek, and came upon forty- 
one mandarin junks, moored across the stream. Each was 
armed with a long twenty-four or thirty-two pounder gun 
forward, and also with from four to six nine-pounders. The 
first shot fired after she got within range struck the Hong- 
hong, and for some minutes the shot came thick aboard of 
her. The other gunboats now came up, and forming in as 
loose order as possible, immediately opened fire. The junks 
stood for some time, and returned the fire with spirit. It 
requires no small amount of steadiness and courage to work 
that large exposed gun, rising in the bows of the junk, and 
Avithout a scrap of protection to the man who fires it. 
After some little time confusion seemed to increase. They 
are all swift vessels, impelled by oars or sails. Several of 
them got under way, and turned for flight up the creek. 
Immediately they did so they were comparatively powerless, 
for their stern guns were of small calibre and were not well 
served. The steamers pressed on in pursuit ; but the 
waters shoaled. The gunboats draw from seven feet to 



CAPTUKE OF JUNKS IX ESCAPE CREEK. 17 

seven feet six inclies ; these flat-bottomed Mandarin junks 
can float in tliree feet. One by one the steam gunboats 
grounded, but the commodore's cry was, '-'Never mind, 
push on." They had towed behind them the boats of the 
larger ships. Quickly, as a steamer got fast in the mud, the 
men swarmed into the boats, manned the guns in their bows, 
and rowed off' in pursuit. At last there was not a steamer 
afloat, the junks were in full flight up the creek, the row- 
boats were in hot pursuit. It was hard work, for these are 
swift vessels, and, Avith forty Chinese pulling for dear life, 
they passed deftly through the shallow and treacherous 
channels. The guns, however, in the bows of the pursuers, 
told heavily ; and when a boat did get alongside, the crew 
always fired a broadside of grape, jumped out on the other 
side, swam ashore, and were lost in the paddy-fields. 

Sixteen junks were thus taken and destroyed in the main 
creek. Thirteen escaped by dint of swift rowing. The sun 
v/as tremendous, and cases of sun-stroke were occurring 
among the men. One jnnk had in its terror turned up a 
little inlet to the right, and, being followed, was politely led 
out. A squadron of ten went up a passage to the left, 
which is supposed to afford a shallow channel up to Canton. 
They were now, however, so utterly panic-stricken that, 
upon being approached by four boats, they were all aban- 
doned and burnt upon the spot. 

Thus ended the first day's work. 

Commodore Elliott, however, was not satisfied about 
those thirteen junks. He had suspicions also that there 
were a great many more in those creeks. 

The next day was employed in stopping the four bolt 
holes of this rabbit warren. Captain Forsyth, in the 
Hornet, was now left to guard Escape Creek. The InfiexiUe 
had her broadsides bearing npon the entrance to the Second 
Bar Creek. Captain Edgell, in the Tribune, took charge of 
the Sawshee Channel. All the points of escape into Canton 
Biver being thus closed. Commodore Elliott and his gun- 
boats with all the ships' boats of his squadron in tow, on 
"Wednesday morning, set forth to explore the Sawshee 
Channel. For twelve miles his gunboats found water, but 
found nothing else ; but the commodore saw a very re- 

c 



18 CHINA. 

markable pagoda, wliicli he had seen tlie day before when 
running up the Escape Creek, and he felt convinced that 
these creeks were all in communication. He also met a 
Chinaman who told him that four of his friends who escaped 
on Monday had got away to a town whereof this pagoda is 
the principal building, and which we now know to be Tuug- 
koon. Abandoning his steamers, therefore, he took to his 
boats, and, after rowing twelve miles between paddy-fields, 
rounded a point of the creek and found himself close in 
with the town of Tung-koon, and also v/ith a fleet of junks 
(one of them of great size and splendour), and under a bat- 
tery. The Chinese were utterly unprepared for this sudden 
meeting. The English boats fired all their guns, gave a 
cheer, and made a rush ; the Chinese jumped overboard 
without firing a shot. 

Now, however, came the worst part of the affair. It was 
necessary to destroy these junks, and it was desirable to 
to take away the chief junk. But the boats were in the 
midst of a city. The crews of the junks established them- 
selves in houses and fired upon the sailors with j in galls. 
The marines were obliged to form and charge in the streets. 
The Madarin junk was found to have powder upon her deck 
and trains communicating between her and the shore. 
Then a house close to her was set on fire, and up she went, 
nearly carrying an English pinnace up with her. Twelve 
large junks were here destroyed. The sailors, who had no 
sails in their row-boats, having now done their work, hardly 
cared to pull back again ; sails, therefore, were improvised 
out of the mats and other spoil of the junks, and they came 
sailing down Sawshee Channel in guise which might have 
puzzled the master of each ship to recognize his own boat. 

In this affair one man out of every ten engaged was hit, 
— a large average even in European warfare. Such was the 
result of the expedition of the Escape Creek. 



I shall describe the battle of Fatshan in all its details, 
not only because it was the most desperate cutting- out afikir 
that has happened in these waters, but also because it en- 
ables me to describe at the same time the theatre of our 
operations and the present position of the British force in 



PLA^ OE THE 

EATTIE ©¥ TAT-SmA¥, 

rougM, June 1?^ 1857. 




,g.>fi«si_ 







THE ADMIRAL LEAVES HONGKONG. 11^ 

China. I have sent home by this mail a plan of the opera- 
tions, and if Mr. Wyld will publish it in a cheap form, and 
if people will refer to it while reading my narrative, I 
believe I can make the incidents clear to them. If I do 
not, it must be my own fault, for no one had a better oppor- 
tunity of seeing them.* 

On Friday, the 29 th of May, at nine o'clock in the morn- 
ing, Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, commander-in-chief, 
left the Calcutta line-of-battle ship and hoisted his flag on 
board the Coroinandel, a small paddle-wheel steamer which 
had been a passenger-boat, and was very weak both in 
scantling and armament. She had been bought when our 
force here vras too small for its work ; and her recommenda- 
tions were, tliat her draught of water is not great and her 
machinery is tolerably trustworthy. The latter cannot be 
said for the gunboats, which break down constantly ; their 
boilers are worn out, but others are on their way, and all 
will then be right. The Coromandel, however, is a lucky 
boat. The admiral uses her as a tender to the Calcutta, and 
takes his little eggshell into a hot fire as confidently as if 
she were a shot-proof battery. She has been five times in 
the thick of it, .has been hulled over and over again j but 
her vital ^^art, her machinery, has never yet been hit. 

The admiral was accompanied by Commodore Keppel, 
Commander Holland, of the Calcutta ; Mr. Fowler, flag- 
lieutenant ; Mr. Somerset, acting signal-lieutenant ; and 
Dr. Anderson, stafl"-surgeon, and Mr. Jones, second-master. 
Lieutenant Douglas, of the Calcutta, commanded the Coro- 
mandel, and Mr. Raymond, of the Encounter, had volunteered 
to show the channel up the river. With the exception, 
of Mr. Janes, the admiral's secretary, and of one individual 
who was there as the admiral's guest, these were the only 
occupants of the quarter-deck. 

Bang goes the signal-gun, and the Coromandel is under 
weigh. Four low, black, vixen-looking screws immediately 
show signs of movement, and they are soon following in the 
wake of the admiral. These are the Haughty, the Opossum, 
the Forester, and the Plover gunboats. Two of these are 
armed with two long 36 and one 68-pounder ; the other 
* The same plan is inserted in this volume. 

c 2 



20 CHINA. 

two have not their large gun on board. Away we go, the 
Haughty holding her own well with the flagship, and the 
others coming on some distance astern. We pass through 
the archipelago of islands which lie in the great estuary 
called tlie Mouth of the Canton Elver. We coast by the 
Castle Peak Bay, — a large inlet where seventeen junks were 
destroyed some weeks since, and where those papers were 
taken which have told us something of the proceedings of 
our enemies. We pass the pyramidal islet of Lintin — the 
great feature of the entrance of this river ; and as we lose 
it behind us, we begin to see mainland, or what is imagined 
to be mainland, on each side. There are clouds upon the 
mountain-tops, and I am told that within that mainland 
there are creeks and channels that run in infinitely reticu- 
lated convolutions and communicate again with large rivers 
which keep open the water-way far up into the coantry. 
Captain Keith Stewart penetrated eighty miles among them 
and found a civil and friendly population, but no signs of 
any termination to the labyrinth. There is a Chinese map 
of them recently taken in one of the junks ; but it is like a 
picture by a pre-Raphaelite of a handful of ravellings ; it 
may be an aide-memoire to a man who knows them, but is 
of no use to a stranger. Among them pirates prowl and 
hide ; and here, when close pressed, the Mandarin junks of 
war take refuge. Here, also, they lie and watch their 
opportunity, coming down in case of opportunity to mob a 
steamer, as they mobbed the Goromandel on the 4th of 
January, and the Comus not long since, sending through the 
Comus a wicked shot, which took off a seaman's legs, went 
through a chest of drawers, and destroyed all the captain's 
crockery. What we call " mainland," therefore, is only the 
banks of a channel which leads to Canton throuofh this maze 

o 

of shallow and narrow waters. 

Now we hug the right-hand shore of this sickly pale- 
green river, and we pass a group of mamelons that mark the 
entrance to a bay. This is Anson's Bay, and low down, 
nearly level with the water, is a line of stone embrasures, 
at which twelve large guns show their muzzles. These are 
hostile guns. This is the fort of Chuenpee. There is a 
sensible old Mandarin there, who writes to Pekin that no 
barbarian dares to look upon Chuenpee ; but he also gives 



THE BOGUE FORTS. 21 

strict orders that no gun in Chuenpee shall ever be fired on 
a barbarian ; so we have hitherto let him alone. We were 
in close range for some time, but no Chinaman showed his 
eye over his gun. 

The channel contracts. Away to the left there is an 
unlimited extent of rocks, shoals, and shallows ; but the 
channel runs between two hills. Midway between these 
high shores interpose two green islets. At the bottom of 
the hill which forms the right-hand bank run two separate 
lines of embrasures, built of very large stones, which are 
now knocked about in strange confusion. The islets have 
similar lines of fortification, which circle their summits like 
coronets. As we steam up between the islets and the shore 
I look with horror on the place. Here are four batteries, 
each having embrasures for a hundred monstrous guns, and 
all concentrating four cross-fires upon this very spot. 
Happily the danger has ceased. These are, or rather these 
were, the Bogue Forts. John Chinaman complains that 
we don't fight fair when we from time to time take these 
forts. Instead of going up to them like brave men, we send 
a few small ships in for all the guns to fire at, and, when the 
guns are all at work, some marines and blue-jackets leap 
over the wall in the rear and drive the gunners out. The 
Chinese are of a practical and reasoning turn of mind. 
When asked why they ran away from a storming party, one 
of them answered, in my hearing, " No can. Two piecy 
man no can stand all same place. S'pose you 7)iust come in, 
I go out." 

These Wantung islands are, I am told, to be occupied by 
a force of marines, expected to arrive by the Sanspareil about 
the end of July. 

After passing this celebrated spot we come to a larger 
island, called Tiger Island. It is a green hill and valley, 
but with no trees upon it. Here are commissariat ofiicers 
laying plans for making it a depot for their bullocks. Major 
Kearney, who, as assistant-quartermaster-general, has been 
associated with them in this service, comes on board and 
tells me he here joins the expedition on duty, having it in 
command to report to his general the military character of 



22 CHINA. 

the country tlirough wliicli it may proceed, and its caj)abili- 
ties for purposes connected with his department. 

Poor Kearney ! he was every inch a soldier, full of zeal 
and hope ; after a career of honour at Sandhurst, a youth 
passed in India, and many years lost in office- duties at the 
Horse Guards, the desire of his life was now about to be 
accomplished. He was to see active service in this Chinese 
war, and to acquire personal distinction, as he certainly 
would have done, in military operations. We came out 
together, and during the voyage acquaintance had augmented 
into intimacy. When I congratulated him that he was 
about to receive his baptism of lire, it never occurred to me 
to imagine that such a man would be knocked to pieces 
by a 32-pound shot from a Chinese junk, yet so it hap- 
pened. 

Half an hour's steaming brings us to the entrance of the 
Sawshee Channel — a broad water which runs away eastward 
into a plain covered with little round trees and well-covered 
patches, having that peculiar air of greenness so well 
imitated in Chinese landscapes — the tender green of the 
young rice. This is the Sawchee Channel mentioned in my 
account of Commodore Elliott's expedition. It is supposed 
to lead to a large river to the eastward, but no one knows. 
There are mamelon-shaped hills in the background — here 
all hills are of that shape — and Commodore Elliott's pagoda 
is just visible ; but beyond the scene of his operations we 
know nothing. 

At four o'clock we open a wide reach of the river, called 
the " Second Bar Anchorage," and are in the middle of a 
British fleet. Here we find the Tribune, the Fury, the 
Hornet, the Bittern, the Sihylle, and also the gunboats 
Staunch, Hongkong, and Forhes. Seven of Commodore 
Elliott's captured junks are also here. 

AYe had an opportunity of inspecting all these junks. 
With one exception, the large gun had upon some former 
occasion been captured, and had one of the trunnions 
knocked off. The manner in which this had been repaired 
by the Chinese excited great admiration : they had passed a 
strong iron band round the gun, fitted a false trunnion to 



THE BANKS OF THE PEAEL EIVER. 23 

it, and kept it in its place by a firm iron breecHng. The 
prizes were full of cordage, mats, Chinese clothing, powder, 
loose balls, and shot-holes. 

On the next day (Saturday, 30th May) we steamed up the 
river to Macao Fort, passing many picturesque horseshoe-form 
tombs, and some villages that had been destroyed by the 
rebels. Our guns look out formidable and stern, but the 
hundreds of sanpans and junks which we meet manifest no 
fear. The bumboats attach themselves to the ships of war 
immediately they anchor. There is an air of fearless con- 
fidence about the people, which shows that the industrious 
classes know that we have no intention to hurt them. A 
few weeks since a Chinese who supplied our ships with beef 
was beheaded, he, and his wife, and his children, yet the 
admiral has found no difficulty in making another contract 
for beef at about 6d. per lb. The boats come round us with 
bananas, and lemon-syrup, and sweet potatoes ; and the 
Chinamen are taking Jack's shillings and English coppers 
at a most usurious rate of exchange. The husbandmen 
upon the banks pursue their labours in their paddy-fields, 
not only as though no enemy were near, but under the pro- 
tection of his guns, for they know that while we are here 
the Mandarin sailors and soldiers cannot come down and do 
them spoil and violence, as is their wont. We have a 
Chinese pilot, who, having got his wife and children out of 
the clutches of the Mandarins, and located them at Hong- 
kong, wishes it to be understood that he is not a traitor, 
but an English subject. He wears a glazed hat and a regu- 
lation jacket. I thought at first that he had cut ofi" the 
last link which bound him to "Whampoa — his tail. But no; 
he has gone no further than a compromise in this respect ; 
he wears it coiled round his head, inside his hat. When it 
blows hard he ties it round his hat outside. 

Our branch of the river (the Blenheim Passage) now 
contracts to the dimensions of the Thames at E.ichmond, 
and but for the banana and lychee trees one might expect 
to see a punt and a chair, an elderly gentleman and a land- 
ing-net. Ever and anon we come up to a Britisli ship, 
whose captain goes ofi" to hold converse with the admiral. 
Thus we pass the Injiexible paddle- steamer, and the Niger 



24 CHINA. 

screw ; also the Cruiser and the Elk. Further on we find 
the Acorn, 12-gun brig, and the Bustard gunboat. 

Now we arrive at a bar made by the Chinese by sinking 
junks filled with stones. One narrow passage has been par- 
tially cleared, and it is said that there are sixteen feet of 
water over that part at high water. The Coromandel was 
obliged to go at it at full speed, and some rotten timber 
came floating up where she had got through. This bar is 
not marked in the Admiralty chart. 

It is astonishing, not that this bar exists, but that a 
hundred of them do not occur. At one time we had only 
two ships here, and junks were accustomed to come out and 
mob them. 

Some way above this there is a boom half-way across, 
placed by the English to prevent the descent of fireships at 
night, and, having passed this, the Blenheim Passage, along 
which we have come, debouches into the full river, and we 
have a channel to the left which is called Fatshan Branch, 
This channel leads up to the city of Fatshan, a city reported 
to be rich in dockyards and arsenals, and about twelve miles 
distant. Thither it is said the most timorous of the mag- 
nates of Canton have retired in anticipation of our attack 
upon that city. This Fatshan Branch is our ultimate des- 
tination. Up that channel is the fort and the fleet we are 
going to attack. We see our battle-field as we cross the 
mouth, and proceed directly up to Macao Fort, which is 
placed at the top of a reach running down directly to 
Canton. The fort is only two miles and a half from the city. 

In this intrenchment are 250 marines. It consists of a 
strong embrasured wall, surrounding a pagoda of three 
stories. It is situated on a tongue of land having water on 
three sides. The whole is in capital order, armed with 
large ships' guns, and commanding two channels. The time 
is gone by when the junks could come down and throw shot 
into the fort and retire unmolested. 

From the top of the pagoda we see the city of Canton on 
the one side, and the fort and the junks on the other. 
Admiral Seymour and Commodore Keppel are reconnoitring 
the fort. Let us join the marine oflicers and look towards 
Canton. The chief part of the city is hidden from us by 



DISTANT VIEW OF CANTON. 25 

the rising ground on Honan's Island at our feet ; but we 
look down the reach on a large suburb not very unlike what 
we see on the banks of the Medway a couple of miles below 
Rochester Bridge. There are two ruined lines of forts, 
which I am told are the Shameen forts, blown up by the 
English w^hen they retired from the city. We can see also 
Gough Fort, which, at this distance, looks not unlike 
Chester Cathedral, and stands on an eminence far back. 
We also see the celebrated eight-storied pagoda, which has 
an ancient and respectable appearance, and hints the idea 
that these structures were originally suggested as imitations 
of the bamboo, just as the Corinthian capital was suggested 
by the acanthus, the Gothic aisle by avenues of forest trees, 
and the Saxon arch by twisted willows. The Chinese are 
as busy as bees round Gough Fort. There is a great 
encampment there. They are throwing up embankments 
connecting the works with the city walls, and evidently 
expecting that the tactics of the last attack will be repeated 
in the next. They are immensely mistaken. 

The admiral and commodore having completed their 
survey, we can now occupy the opposite aperture in this 
pagoda. AYe see the fort we are to attack on Monday 
and a portion of the junk fleet. All who would under- 
stand the operations must bear with me while I describe 
the locality of them. 

Just two miles from the moutli of the Fatshan Branch is 
a long low island called Hyacinth Island. There is a steep 
hill on the left bank opposite to that island ; and beyond it, 
and higher up the " branch," two smaller tributaries go off 
right and left. These features map our field of battle. 
Stand on the Thames below Twickenham Eyot, bring the 
Star and Garter Hill close up to it, make two creeks brancli 
right and left from the river above the eyot, and you would 
have something like it. It is tolerably well shown in the 
Admiralty chart, but the two creeks are not quite correct, 
and the distance between the island and the transverse 
creeks is too great. 

This is our fighting-ground. That hill (the Star and 
Garter Hill) has been converted into a fort. Nineteen large 
guns are there mounted. Along the two creeks and across 



26 CHINA. 

the channel above the island seventy-two junks are moored, 
•with their large bow guns so placed as- to command the 
channels on either side of the island. A six-gun battery is 
erected on the shore opposite the fort. The fire of the 
seventy junks will sweep the narrow channels on either side 
of the island. The fire of the fort* and battery will plunge 
upon them from either shore. This is the position we have 
to attack. 

The Chinese believe they are here impregnable. They 
know you cannot get at the junks without first taking tl;ie 
fort, and they believe that no man can go up that hill in 
the face of their guns. Several vessels have from time to 
time gone in and exchanged shots with the fort and come 
back again. This confirms their confidence. 

We now return to our anchorage down the river, and the 
captains receive their instructions for the attack on Monday 
morning at four o'clock. The Coromandel is to go in first, 
towing the marines, and manosuvring to take off the fire 
while they are landed ; then she is to dash in among the 
junks, the gunboats and the rowboats following. Hard work 
for the little Coromandel. 

On Sunday there was a large congregation on board the 
flagship. The solemn words of the prayer before battle fell 
heavy upon every ear. 

It was scarcely three o'clock on the morning of Monday, the 
1st of June, when those who slept on the deck of the 
Coromandel^ wrapped in their cloaks, were aroused from their 
sleep. A hushed movement among the sailors had already 
begun. The steam was up. The vigilant young commander, 
Douglas, was already at his post, and looking through the 
darkness for the arrival of the boats containing the marines. 
They soon came, and in a long string of crowded rowboats 
attached themselves to the stern of the steamer. Then the 
admiral took his place upon the bridge, the wheels slowly 
revolved, and the Coromandel moved forth from the sur- 
rounding fleet. Those dark hulls, seen dimly by their own 
lights, would appear to be soundly at rest but for a hushed 
murmur which ever and anon comes from the darkness — the 
hum of men mustering in secret. 

* This fort has since been named 'Tort Seymour." 



THE MOENING OF THE FIRST OF JUNE. 27 

Tlie admiral's last orders were, " Let no one up anchor 
till I am well in with the fort. Respect private property ; 
and do no violence to unarmed people." It was in obedience 
to the first of these that the Coromandel was allowed to 
steam out alone. 

The passage through the bar was buoyed with lights. It 
was still black night as the steamer cleared it, and for half 
an hour, with her freight of 300 red-coats in tow, she steamed 
on at a slow speed up to the mouth of the Fatshan Branch. 
It was an anxious thing to look forth from the paddle-box of 
that steamer as she steadily advanced into the enemy's 
country — alone. An almost imperceptible dawn soon 
rendered the darkness less opaque, and objects became in- 
distinctly visible. She had gone about a mile up, when, from 
the right bank a little ahead of her, a rocket shot up in 
the air ; then another from the opposite bank, and a minute 
after it was answered by another from the fleet of junks. 

" John Chinaman is determined to show that he is not to 
be caught napping " Avas the remark, and on we went for 
another five minutes. 

There is little twilight here ; the division between thick 
darkness and broad daylight is almost to be measured by 
moments. 

Now we could see the higher hills that form the back- 
ground to the fort, and the Coromandel was abreast of a 
village which is about 1,500 yards from the fort itself. 
Suddenly, in the grey distance, a flash and a curl of smoke, 
and before the booming sound reached us the big shot struck 
the waters about 200 yards ahead, driving the spray high 
up in the air. 

It was a beautiful line, straight for the vessel's bows, and 
the spot was carefully noted, for it shov/ed the range for 
which the lower tier of guns was laid. 

Your Chinaman does not aim his guns at the moment 
according to his judgment of the distance of the object. He 
practises at certain points which an assailant must pass, and 
notches the elevation on the carriage of the gun. 

Scarcely had the splash shown the gunner that his range 
was short when another flash came from the higher tier. 
The shot, with a rushing sound, passed over the ship a little 



28 CHINA. 

to the left, and dashing into a paddj-field on our port 
quarter, sent a column of black mud up thirty feet. 

All this time the Coromandel was advancing, and the 
dawn was becoming day. It being certain that she was 
v/itliin range, the fort opened in earnest at the steadily 
advancing mark. First came a general salvo, then fiasli 
after flash in rapid succession. Then the battery on the 
other side of the island opened ; rushing sounds came 
strangely near and the waters sometimes splashed the deck. 
Fortunately, the ricochetting shot which a Chinaman best 
loves was out of the question, for his guns were high up 
upon the hill, and a small steamer moving stem on at a dis- 
tance of 900 yards, is a little object and hard to bit. The 
shot came near us and around us, but did not strike. 

We reached the island — Hyacinth Island — and were 
steaming up the left-hand channel, directly to the fort. 

Suddenly there was a concussion and a grating sound. 
" Back your paddles — we are aground." We were aground 
upon a line of junks sunk across the channel. As soon as 
the Chinese saw this, they redoubled their fire. The boats 
were cast off, and told to row quietly under the land, while 
the fort was occupied with firing at us. Lieutenant 
Douglas took a dingy and a boat-hook, and sounded the 
obstacle. The Chinamen had left a narrow channel as an 
escape hole for themselves, close under the bank beside us ; 
all the rest was blocked. 

The GoTomandel was too firmly fixed to benefit by this 
information. It was dead low water, and she must float in 
a few minutes. Meanwhile she was fulfilling her prescribed 
duty, which was to take the shot of the fort. The crew ran 
up and down the deck to try to start her, but in vain. The 
Coromandel did not fire a shot ; in fact, she had only one 
gun loaded. She could not afibrd to make a smoke at this 
critical part of the river. 

But now Keppel thought he had restrained himself long 
enough to fulfil the Admiral's orders. He came up on the 
paddle-box of the Hongkong gunboat, which bore his pen- 
nant ; and, having with his quick glance noted the sound- 
ings and the result, stood in between the Coromandel and 
the bank. There he was, like a man thoroughly enjoying- 



ADVANCE OF THE BOATS. 29 

himself. His blue trousers tucked into the tops of his 
Eussian boots, his white pith hat, his small, active, springy 
figure, his constitutionally good-humoured, devil-may-care 
laugh — there was a man who, without the least ostentation, 
was ready to go into any fire that gunpowder and iron 
could get up, and around him were men who were quite 
ready to follow him. 

" May I pass, sir 1 " 

'• Yes, pass ; we are aground." 

Immediately behind the Hongkong comes the Haughty^ 
admirably handled. She is towing the boats of the Fury, 
Inflexible, and Cruiser, large steamers which can only send 
their captains and their crews into these shallow channels. 
Lieutenant Hamilton takes his little shiji through the 
narrow, steams directly for the fort, and diverts the fire 
from the poor Coromandel, who, however, is making violent 
efibrts to get free. Next come the Bustard and the Forester. 
They are waved to pass where the Hongkong and the 
Haughty passed, but they do not see, or they think they 
know better, and they get hopelessly aground. It is a pity, 
for the Hongkong has met with some stakes on the other 
side of the channel, and those junks whose painted ports we 
have been so long looking at, and which remained so 
steadily inactive while the range was uncertain, have now 
opened fire, and are plumping round shot into her with an 
uncomfortable precision. I saw her struck three times 
while I looked at her. 

TJie Plover gets up beside the Hongkong, but cannot 
break the barrier. It is here that Sergeant Christian has 
his head taken off by a round shot. And now the Opossum, 
having cast ofi" her boats, goes up the right-hand channel at 
full speed, and dashes into the fire. Several of the other 
gunboats are aground astern : but the ships' boats have 
taken to their oars. Crowded with men, and cheering 
lustily, galley and gig, pinnace, launch, and barge, come 
racing up. The scene is like a regatta, but Death picks his 
victims as they pass. 

But now the tide is making and the Coromandel is free. 
As she steams up to the foot of the fort the fire slackens — 
only now and then an obstinate gun gives out. The hill is 



30 CHINA. 

now comparatively free from smoke, and the scene is as 
plain from the paddle-box of the Coromandel as if it Avere 
enacted upon a stage for our amusement. The boats' crews 
and marines have landed and are mounting that steep hill. 
They have taken the precipitous side, where the fat China- 
mei], who had prepared to receive them by the zigzag path, 
never thought they would come. The Chinese gunners are 
trying in vain to depress their guns so as to sweep them 
with grape. Failing that, they are rolling down 32-pound 
shot upon them, and throwing stink-pots which do not 
explode, and three-pronged spears. They have not much 
time for this amusement. Commodore Elliott, with a middy 
by his side, is running a race with Captain Doyle, who com- 
mands the marines, and is nearly up to the embrasures. 
Captain Boyle fires his revolver at a Chinaman who is 
trying to fire his matchlock at him. He misses him, for 
the gallant captain is too much blown with his race to shoot 
with accuracy. The Chinaman, in return, rolls a couple of 
huge shot down at the captain, and then takes up a spear of 
prodigious length and hurls it at the middy. A shot from 
Commodore Elliott's revolver settles this brave man's career. 
I saw him afterwards near where he fell, grim and fierce in 
death. 

Mixed with the marines, and but little behind the fore 
rank, climbed the post-captains and commanders. We can 
recognize Corbett, and Forsyth, and Leckie (and by his side 
Major Kearney, conspicuous by his helmet-shaped pith hat)^ 
and Fellowes, contending vigorously with the laws of 
gravitation. Edgell is hit ; no, he has only slipped while 
dodging a round shot, and has rolled half-way down the hill. 
He gets up and shakes himself and recommences. Mount- 
ing the same precipitous ascent with quick elastic step, his 
flag-lieutenant. Fowler, by his side, goes the admiral him- 
self. He went off from the Coromandel in his own boat, 
unobserved by many on board. He has no weapon, not 
even a walking-stick to help him up ; yet he outstrides 
many of the marines. He goes to see what next is to be 
done, and we will make haste to join him. 

This part of the affair is soon over. The gunners sulkily 
retire as the storming party arrive ; but they fire their gims 



THE FORT IS TAKEN. 31 

within fifty yards of their assailants. They walk away 
down the back of the hill, and it requires many shots from 
the marines to make them run. The marines fire very 
badly j running up hill is not a good preparation for rifle- 
shooting at moving objects. 

From the top of the hill I have a most magnificent 
]Danoramic view of the operations below. Lieutenant 
Fowler has brought one of the Chinese guns to bear upon 
the junks, and the junks fire up at us, but neither do much 
damage. Now Elliott and his captains run down to their 
boats and follow the Haughty, which is already clear of the 
island and up v/ith the junks beyond. The marines descend 
into the paddy-fields at the foot of that side of the hill fort 
which faces the junks, and, up to the waist in water, they 
take pot shots at the Chinamen. The Haughty drives 
right stem on into one of the two large junks that have 
been sweeping the channel, and cracks her like a nut-shell. 
Forsyth jumps first on board, and the crew jump overboard. 
It is the old story, "'Spose you must come, I must go." 
The shots must be flying furiously down there, for thirty 
junks are blazing away their twelve guns each at the 
intruders who rush' into their creek from our side of the 
island, and forty are equally rapid in their discharges upon 
the boats that have gone up on the other side. How any 
mortal thing can live in that hell of flying iron it seems 
impossible to conceive. The secret, I believe, lies in the 
resolution of our men. They pull directly up alongside, and 
from the elevation of the guns the inevitable broadside of 
grape passes over their heads. I saw this happen in the 
case of Commodore Elliott's boat, which emerged unharmed 
from a discharge I thought had annihilated it. The junk 
had coolly waited till the boat was alongside, and then 
poured in its shot. It all passed high, and when the smoke 
cleared away the crew were running across the paddy-fields, 
and the marines were shooting them. 

Tho game was soon up. First came a rush of fire and a 
loud explosion. A pillar of white smoke rises high into the 
air and swells at the top like a Doric column. Then 
another and another, and the guns cease, and the cannon 
smoke blows away, and the boats' crews are rowing from 



32 CHINA. 

junk to junk, and in two long lines, almost as far as the eye 
can reach, lie the junks, — some kindling, some in full blaze, 
but all stranded and abandoned. In one of these the 
sailors rescued an old man and a boy, chained to a gun, and 
left to burn. In another, a woman and child were tied 
with whisps of bamboo to a 32-pounder. There were many 
which the sailors could not enter, and perhaps these also 
had their victims. 

We have been looking down upon the junks which lay 
across the Fatshan Branch, and also along the winding creek 
that stretches away at right angles to the left. Our view of 
those whicli lay along the creek that bears to the right was 
not quite so near. But here the contest ceased about the 
same time. E-ight and left, covering an immense extent of 
narrow water, the junks lie, prizes either to us or the 
ilames. We have leisure now to count them — they are 
seventy-two. 

For the first time I appreciate the far-sighted wisdom of 
the admiral's plan of attack. By leading up his ships at 
dead low water he not only obtained the advantage of a 
rising tide when his steamers grounded upon the shoals and 
unknown impediments, but he also made sure of finding the 
junks all aground, knowing, as he did, that they were 
moored along each shore, to leave the channel clear for 
ordinary traffic. Thus the crews were obliged either to fight 
or run. Had he taken them at even a quarter flood they 
had been afloat. Some of the hindermost would have been 
destroyed, and by fire or by sinking would have choked the 
channel, while the rest would have escaped up the number- 
less creeks, which the Chinamen only know. 

While some are plundering and some are thinking of 
breakfast, there is heavy firing in the distance. People ask, 
Where is Keppel 1 We must follow his fortunes ; for all is 
not over yet, and there is much to tell. 

When Commodore Keppel passed us at dawn he steamed 
away up the channel to the right of Hyacinth Island, until 
he came under the six-gun battery, and within fire of the 
junks. Here his vessel ran aground, and the Plover coming 
up, the commodore transferred himself to her ; but as she 
could not get up, he got into his own galley, and, followed 



KEPPEl's dash at the JITNKS. 33 

by the row-boats of tlie Calcutta, the Bittern, and the Niger^ 
pulled straight away through the fire. The big junk that 
lay across the channel was boarded in her own smoke. As 
usual, when the assailants grew very near, the Chinamen 
fired a broadside and also a train, and slipped into the 
water on the other side. The boats were scarcely free of 
her when she blew up. Pdght in among the thirty-five 
junks dashed Keppel and his cheering dare-devils, receiving 
their fire and driving the crews away as they approached. 
Yain were the Chinamen's stinkpots, their three-pronged 
spears, and their ingenious nets, so contrived as to fall over 
a boat's crew and catch them like herrings, while they spear 
them through the meshes. To utilize such ingenious in- 
ventions John Chinaman must wait till the boats come 
alongside, and this he has not yet tutored his nerves to 
accomplish. 

•' ISTever wait, lads ;" cried the commodore ; " leave those 
rascals to the gun-boats and the fellows behind ; push on 
ahead ! " 

Through this wilderness of junks they pulled, driving out 
their crews by sheer audacity, and leaving little to be done 
by those who should come after. They shot through the 
lines up into the vacant channel. Some of his boats had 
been hulled by the junks ; perhaps some lingered to pay a 
visit to a deserted Chinaman, or to stop his mouth ; but 
Keppel still pressed onward, and where he goes he always 
gets some to follow. Where could he be going % Was it 
information, or was it intuition % or has he resolved to 
attack with his seven boats the city of Fatshan and its 
population of 200,000 people % I have not asked him and 
he has not said, but I suspect the city was his object. With 
four galleys and three boom-boats, carrying a gun each in 
their bows, they speed away from the conquered junks and 
hold on for nearly four miles ; but now there are junk 
masts in sight, and every one knows that a fight is coming. 
A little further on, and they come upon their prey, and 
also upon one of those strong positions which the Chinese 
have now learnt to take. 

At the part of the Fatshan branch — which they had now 
reached — there is an island shaped like a leg of mutton, 

D 



34 CHINA. 

placed lengtliway in the river. The broad part is towards 
the British boats, and across the knuckle-end twenty large 
junks lie moored to the shore and aground. The consequence 
of this position is, that to attack them the British boats must 
pass through one of two passages, both of which narrow to a 
funnel, and upon that narrow neck of water the whole fire 
of the twenty junks will be concentrated. One of these 
funnel passages has been staked and is impassable. The 
other has not water to carry two boats abreast. At this 
perilous passage Keppel and his crew now dashed. The 
three boom-boats took the ground in attempting to follow. 
The base of this triangular island consists of high land 
which the grounded boom-boats could not fire over, so their 
guns v/ere useless ; the apex, or, to use my more familiar 
illustration, the knuckle-part, was low paddy-fields, which 
the junks' guns could readily sweep across. It was a posi- 
tion worthy of a Carthaginian — locus insidiis natus. 

No sooner did the boats appear in the narrow passage 
than twenty 32-pounders sent twenty round shot, and a 
hundro 1 smaller guns sent their full charges of grape and 
canister at a range of 500 yards right among them. The 
effect was terrible. Keppel was sounding with the boat-hook 
for water for the boom-boats, and went back amid the storm 
to get them up. They start afresh, and make another 
effort to get through. The commodore pushes on ahead. 
There was Captain Leckie in his galley, with Major Kearney 
by his side. There was Captain Bolland in the launch of 
the Calcutta, and Lieutenant Seymour in the barge of the 
same ship. The Tribune's cutter was in among them. . The 
Hongkong, who had worked herself up through the mud to 
within 500 yards of the scene of action, had sent her gig. 
Perhaps there were others, but, amid so much smoke and 
fire, even those who were in it cannot agree as to minute 
details. If the gunners of the Excellent had been in those 
Chinese junks, and had worked those 32-pounder guns, they 
could hardly have thrown the round shot straighter. Kepjoel's 
galley, not a large mark, is hit three times in two minutes ; 
a 32-pounder shot strikes Major Kearney in the breast, 
tearing him to pieces. He must have died without a sensa- 
tion. Young Barker, a midshipman of the Tribune, who 



A HOT FIRE. 35 

wore upon liis finger a ring bequeathed to him by his 
brother, who was killed at Inkermann, is down, mortally 
■wounded. The commodore's coxswain is killed, and every 
man of his crew is wounded. But the miracle is not that 
the men are falling, but that any escape. The God of battles 
is there, and wonderful are the instances of His merciful pro- 
tection. Captain Cochrane has the sleeve of his coat torn 
away by a shot which leaves him unharmed. A round shot 
enters the Trihun^s boat, and passes along her line of keel 
from stem to stern, without touching a man. " That was 
close, Victor," said Kej)pel to his flag-lieutenant, as a cannon- 
shot passed between their heads. Fortunately for himself, 
" Victor " (Prince Victor of Hohenlohe, as thorough and as 
unpretending a British seaman as if his name were Drake or 
Jervis) was leaning forv/ards, and using his handkerchief as 
a tourniquet to stop the bleeding of a seaman whose hand 
had just been shot off, otherwise that ball must have taken 
Prince Victor's head off. At this time the galley was dis- 
abled, and she was drifting down under the guns of the 
junks. Even Keppel saw that it would not do. The matter 
Avas, however, settled for him, for the next shot tore away 
the stern sheets of his galley while he was, fortunately, 
standing up with the tiller-ropes in his hand, " Seymour, you 
must take me in," and he stepped from his sinking galley 
into the barge of the Calcutta. All the other occupants of 
the galley were also removed into the barge j all except the 
mangled corpse of the coxswain, and the favourite dog of the 
commodore, which had been accustomed to be tended by that 
man, and would not leave his body. With this freight 
the wreck of the galley drifted with the rising tide up 
towards the junks. 

ISTow the boats retired amid a sounding of gongs, strange 
shouts of triumph, and a redoubled fire. They retired to 
the HongJcong, which was aground astern ; but which, sup- 
ported by the Starling, threw shot and shell up among the 
junks, and received from them a full equivalent for their 
fire. 

The Commodore was waiting for reinforcements and for 
more water in the river, and, meanwhile, he piped to 
dinner. The men were getting their rations, and were devour- 

D 2 



36 CHINA. 

ing them, when the fii^e from the junks slackened. " Three 
cheers for the Blue," cried a Raleigh boat that now came 
up. " Man the boats, lads ; those rascals are getting afloat." 
Off they go agaiD, dinnerless, but in high spirits, and under 
a fire so hot that the Calcutta's launch is sunk, and Com- 
mander Rollarid has to scramble into another boat. 

This time they find water enough in the narrow passage, 
and, dashing through the shot, find the enemy afloat and in 
movement. It has now become a chase. These junks, 
manned by from sixty to one hundred rowers, go faster than 
our heavy boom-boats can follow. But the shrapnell shell go 
faster than even a snake junk ; there are twistings in the 
creek that are not shown in the chart, and, in following these 
windings, pursuers and pursued often find themselves side by 
side with an interval of land between them. They fire at 
each other across these peninsulas, and the guns are so well 
served, and the shells are so terrifying, that every now and 
then the crews leap out and the junk is deserted. Push 
on — push on. Six miles this hot chase lasts, and there 
are now but eight junks uncaptured ; when, rounding a sharp 
point, pursued and pursuers rush almost together into the 
city of Fatshan. A Chinese town is not seen afar off"; the 
pagoda and the pawnbrokers' warehouses are the only high 
buildings. Three of the junks escape, the other five are 
headed and are abandoned. But the braves of Fatshan 
would think it a shame that their five junks should be 
taken from under their eyes. They turn out in martial 
array ; they ring bells and beat gongs, they come filing down 
a fosse, so covered from viev/ that only their waving banners 
and their brandished swords and shields are visible. " We 
are terrible ; fiee before us !" they are supposed to sing or 
cry. Keppel has his own way of settling these matters. 
He turned his marines out of his boats, drew them up on 
the margin of the suburb, and poured into the Fatshan 
militia such a volley of Minie balls that the Chinese army 
went quickly back up its fosse again. He proposed to land 
his howitzers and j)ass the night in the city — a daring 
scheme, which might have produced a ransom of half a 
million of dollars or utter destruction, as the fortune of war 
might incline. A message from the admiral, however, 



THE KUSH INTO FATSHAN. 37 

recalled him. He had his five junks towed out before him, 
and as he left the city he stood up in the stern-sheets of his 
boat and shook his fist good-humouredly, saying, " You 
rascals, I'll come back again to you soon ;" and those 
extraordinary Chinese, they, too, laughed — a broad, good- 
humoured grin — and so they parted. 

It was three o'clock when Commodore Keppel returned to 
the fiag-ship, which was now anchored where the Chinese 
admiral's junks had been moored at the commencement of 
the engagement. As he came down, his lost dog recognized 
the yellow Raleigh boat, and swam off to his master. 

Not a junk was preserved.* Their materials are so 
inflammable that they readily ignite one another, and as we 
can make no use of them, they were not worth saving at 
the price of danger to the men. As it was, the shot from 
their heated guns rushed about in a most unpleasant manner. 
At sundown the view from the deck of the flagship was a 
mixture of the grotesque and the sublime. The boats were 
all adorned with barbaric spoils ; banners of every ampli- 
tude, some of them adorned with colossal pictures of the fat 
god Fo, flaunted upon the breeze. Mandarins' coats and 
mandarins' breeches were freely worn. Commodore Elliott's 
crew were equipped each with a mandarin's hat, and foxes' 
tails. They had dutifully reserved one for the commodore, 
but I must confess I did not see him put it on. Around, 
far as the eye could reach, following the windings of this 
maze of creeks, 89 war-junks were smouldering or blazing, 
and every five minutes an explosion shook the air. The 
Cantonese had said that Commodore Elliott's expedition in 
Escape Creek only captured a few deserted fishing-boats. 
From the roofs of their own joss-houses they could now see 
and hear what had been done in Fatshan branch. It was 
bruited in Hongkong that a mandarin of high rank, one 
greater than Yeh, had come down from Pekin to Canton. 
If so, he now gained his first experience. 

Then came Dr. Anderson's sad labour of marshalling the 
wounded for transport, and collecting the reports of the 
assistant-surgeons. But the public despatches will tell all 

* This was a mistake ; five junks were saved, but what has been 
done with them I have not heard. 



38 CHINA. 

this ; enougli for me to state that in these two battles of 
Tung-koon and Fatshan 84 men have been killed or 
wounded. 

That night the two commodores slept, side by side, the 
sleep of the weary, on the deck of the Coromandel ; and so 
ended the 1st of June. 

Next morning, as we passed down the river, two war- 
junks appeared three miles astern, and fired a gun. They 
were chasing the barbarian fleet ! 

It will probably be agreeable to my readers to have Com- 
modore KeppeFs own account of the battle of Fatshan. It 
was, as will be seen by the date, written long after my letter 
had left for England ; but I have not found anything in it 
to render correction of my description necessary. The 
Commodore's letter has already been printed in the Times. 

" ALLiaATOR, Canton River, June 20. 
** The three weeks of this month have been full of excitement. We 
commenced on the 1st with as pretty a boat action as any ever recorded 
in our naval history, though it may never be appreciated, because it 
was fought in China. The troops are now, unfortunately, required for 
India, and I suppose we shall not get them before the summer is over. 
So much the better for them, as it is broiling hot just now. In the 
mean time we have to keep the Canton river open for them, it being 
their high road to the Celestial city, which I suppose they will have to 
occupy before Lord Elgin attempts to bring Commissioner Yeh to 
terms. I am left here in command of the river, the fort of Chucupee, 
■which I took possession of on the 18th, being my boundary at one end, 
and the Macao Fort at the other. They are about foi-ty miles apart ; 
Chucupee is about that distance from Hongkong, and Macao is three 
miles from the city of Canton ; all the intermediate forts have been 
demolished, and on the 1st we polished off the remainder of their war- 
fleet, about 180 Imperial war-junks, so that I now hold uncontrolled 
possession. Our worthy chief — and a fine fellow he is — remains with 
his ship at Hongkong, paying us occasional visits in one of the 
smaller steamers. I have seventeen ships, containing about 2,600 
men, stationed at different distances ; and, this being the anniversary 
of her Majesty's accession, they are all dressed out with flags, and at 
noon Commissioner Yeh will be edified by royal salutes fired the whole 
length of the Imperial river from Canton to below the Bogue Forts. 
My poor Raleigh no longer belongs to her Majesty's navy, and the 
admiral has appointed myself and all the officers to the Alligator, and 
given us three vessels to man as tenders, I live in the Hongkong, but 
come here to sleep when not moving about, this old hulk being a sort 
of fixture. My steward keeps mess, and we all grub together; viz.. 



ADMIRAL KEPPEL's ACCOUNT. 39 

Lieutenant Goodenough, Dr. Crawford, Prince Victor, Autey (my 
secretary), Lord Charles Scott, Montague, and Harry Stephenson. 
"We are very happy and jolly, and the temporary arrangement is a very 
good one. We thought we were going to have a little fight the other 
day, as the admiral had ordered me to take possession of the Chucupee 
Port. We moved down to do so in good order on the morning of the 
18th, but the enemy guessed what they might expect, and very wisely 
* hooked it.' I am afraid this is the last little affair that is likely to 
cccur this summer. I have stationed the vessels under my orders at 
different distances all the way up. The upper part of the river is not 
considered so healthy as the wider part down here, so that I have them, 
relieved every fortnight. There are two islands near where we are 
anchored, where the men and officers of the ships near assemble every 
evening, and play at quoits and all sorts of games. In fact, time seems 
to fly fast, and the mails going and coming every fortnight keeps us all 
alive. Tumour, in command of the Bittern, is now taking his turn up 
at the front, which, although less healthy, is the favourite post. They 
are obliged to be continually on the alert, and look out for fire rafts 
and all sorts of infernal machines. I generally visit them once a week 
in the Honglcong. I hope somebody gave you a good account of our 
boat fight on the 1st of June. It must have been a beautiful sight to 
those who witnessed it from the heights. The shallow water obliged 
the Honglcong to ground, when she would otherwise have been in front 
of everything ; but when she grounded I led on the boats in my gig ; 
but as the tide was rising, the Honghong'ke^i following us as fast as she 
could. The first division of the Chinese fleet were simultaneously 
attacked by about 1,900 men, spread over a large surface, and soon 
gave way ; but I did not take up more than a quarter of that number 
to attack their second division, which was three miles higher up the 
river, in a well-selected place, and evidently the elite of their fleet. 
They numbered exactly twenty, in one compact row ; they mounted 
from ten to fourteen guns each, two of them in stern and bow being 
heavy 32-pounders. I saw that I had all the Raleigh's boats well up, 
and determined to push on. They fired occasional shots, as if to 
ascertain our exact distance, but did not open their heaviest fire until 
we were within 600 yards, and then I soon saw how impossible it 
would be to force our way until I had reinforcements. Nearly the 
first poor fellow whose head was knocked off was an amateur — Major 
Kearney. I had known him many years. We cheered, and I tried to 
get on, when a shot struck my boat right amidships, cut one man in 
two, and took off the arm of another. Prince Victor, who was with 
me, jumped forward to bind the man's arm up with his neckcloth. 
While he was doing so, another round shot passed through both sides 
of the boat, wounding two others of the crew. The boat was filling 
■with water, and I got on one of the seats to keep my legs out of 
the water ; and, just as I stepped up, a third round shot went through, 
both sides of the boat, not more than one inch below the seat on which 
I was standing. Many of our boats had now got huddled together, the 
oars of most being shot away. A boat of the Calcutta being nearest, 
we got in, pulling our wounded men with us. My dog ' Mike * 



40 CHINA. 

refusing to leave the dead body of the man who had been his favourite, 
we were obliged to leave him. I then gave the order to retire on the 
Honghong, and re-form abreast of her. While we were going down, a 
shot cut away all the oars on one side. I called to Lieutenant Graham 
to get his boat ready, as I would hoist my broad pendant, and lead the 
next attack in his boat. I had no sooner spoken than a shot disabled 
his boat, wounding him, and killing and wounding four others. I saw 
Graham one mass of blood, but it was from a marine who stood next 
to him, and part of whose skull was forced three inches into another 
man's shoulder. When I reached the Hongkong, the whole of the 
enemy's fire appeared to be centred upon her. She was hulled twelve 
times in a few minutes ; her deck was covered with the wounded who 
had been brought on board from the boats. I was looking at them, 
when a round shot cut down a marine, and he fell among them. From 
the paddle-box I saw that our heavy firing was now bringing up a 
strong reinforcement. The account of my having been obliged to retire 
had reached them, and they were pulling up like mad. The Honghong 
had floated and grounded again. I ordered a bit of blue bunting to be 
got ready to represent my broad pendant ; I called out, ' Let us try 
the row-boats once more, boys,' and went over the side into our 
cutter (the Raleiglts), in which was Tumour, the faithful spurrier, 
bringing the bit of blue flag. At this moment there arose from the 
boats, as if every man took it up the same instant, one of those British 
cheers so full of meaning that I knew at once that it was all up with 
John Chinaman. They might sink twenty boats, but there were thirty 
others who would go ahead all the faster. On we went. It was indeed 
a lovely and exciting sight. I saw the move among the junks. They 
were breaking ground and moving off, the outermost first. This 
mancEUvre they performed in beautiful order. They never ceased to 
fire. Thi-ee more cheers, and then commenced an exciting chase for 
seven miles. As our shot told on them they ran on shore, and their 
crews forsook them. Seventeen were come up with and captured this 
way ; three only escaped. It was in this last chase that my poor 
spurrier was shot down by my side. I saw his bowels protrude as he 
lay in the bottom of the boat holding my hand. He asked me if I 
thought there was any hope. I could only say, ' Where there is life 
there is hope;' but I had none. Strange to say, the good Crawford 
sewed him up, and the admiral's last letter from Hongkong states 
that spurrier hoped to return to his duty in a few days. What a long 
yarn I have spun you ; but, as I began, the little affair came fresh to 
my memory, and I have filled no end of paper all about self My own 
prospects for the future I cannot guess at, but, going on with self, I 
may be allowed to say to you, whom it is so sure to gratify, that the 
admiral speaks highly of my services in the late boat affair. Whether 
he overrates them or not is not my business, but I do think that they 
ought to insure my continued employment out here, even should I be 
on the flag list. There is a fleet out and coming sufiiciently large for 
two admirals. I see the French have rewarded my services in the 
Crimea higher than our own Government has done. 



ADMIKAL KEPPEL's ACCOUNT. 41 

" July 7. 

" These Chinese rascals still give us enough to do. We are sup- 
posed not to interfere with the trade, so that hundred of vessels pass 
daily up and down the river, but piratical boats and all sorts of rascals 
get in among these traders, who quarrel and attack one another, so 
that it is difficult for us to distinguish the trader from the pirate. 
There are other long row-boats carrying sixty men each, and mounting- 
guns, that are sent out by the mandarins to intercept the trade to 
Hongkong. Sunday was a calm, and many of these fellows were out. 
I sent a gun-boat in the evening. During the night she returned, 
bringing two fellows (traders), whom she caught fighting. Yesterday 
morning I sent the gun-boat and Hongkong again away ; and, as I had 
the case of these traders to investigate, I did not go myself, but sent 
Sir Eobert M'Clure, the captain of the Eslc, with his boats. He chased 
a row-boat up one creek, while the Hongkong, our tender, went after 
another. The land was low, so that I could see their masts all day, 
and see and hear their firing. M'Clure, in his gig and with his launch, 
followed his chase up an inner creek, and on his suddenly coming on a 
war-junk they (the junk) opened fire and killed and wounded ten of 
his men in the launch. Of course, he attacked them again when his 
other boats came up, and captured boats, junk, and all ; so here has 
been a small affair and I not in it, but these are our amusements. 

" I really do not require your ladylike caution ' not to be rash.' It 
is a real fact that your suspected fire-eater retired from a position he 
had taken up, and brought his boats up a second time in regular order, 
when the cheers of our lads would have quelled the hearts of braver 
men than John Chinaman ; but all this I shall hope to fight over again 
with you at home. 

" We have a surgeon out here who served in the naval brigade in 
the Crimea. He says he never saw such frightful wounds as the 
Chinese shot appear to make. By the way I ought to record a delicate 
attention of the ladies of Macao. My commodore's broad pendant 
having been lost when my boat sunk, they have presented me with a 
new silk one, worked with their own fair hands. I hope some day to 
plant it on the walls of the Celestial city, where the ' braves,' as they 
call themselves, shall respect it. I will now, in conclusion, give you a 
copy of a letter to me, equally gratifying in its way. I am sure my 
dear friends at home will agree that it ought to be so : — 

'* ' From Eeae-Admiral Sir M. Seymour. 
'' 'Sir, — I had the satisfaction of communicating yesterday to the 
squadron generally my high sense of the zeal and gallantry disjDlayed 
by the officers and men in the decisive action against the Chinese war- 
junks in the Fatshan creek on the 1st inst., but I feel that it is further 
incumbent on me to express personally my admiration of the cool 
courage and good judgment with which you led the attack, — first, in 
the gunboats until they grounded, and aftei'wards in the ships' boat up 
the Fatshan branch, where, in the vicinity of the village of Fatshau, 
the severe struggle with the formidable line of heavy junks moored 



42 CHINA. 

across the river commenced, and the Hongkong, again aground, bore so 
conspicuous a part ; also, your subsequent determined attack with the 
boats under your command, which finally dislodged the junk forces, 
and led to the ultimate success of the day. The fact that your galley 
■was sunk under you, and that five out of six of her crew were killed or 
■wounded, is the best proof that you maintained the post of honour 
throughout. 

" ' I sincerely congratulate you on your safety, and shall not fail to 
bring your services to the notice of the Lords Commissioners of the 
Admiralty. 

" ' I have the honour, &c., 

" ' M. Setmoue, 
*' ' Rear-Admiral, Commander-in-Chief.' " 



The promotions for this affair were as follow : — 

Admiralty, August 10. 
In consideration of the successful operations against mandarin junks 
up Escape Creek and the Sawshee Channel of the Canton Eiver on the 
25th and 27th of May, and also of the attack on the fort and junk fleet 
in Fatshan Creek on the 1st of June, as recorded in the London 
Gazette of the 1st instant, the following promotions have this day taken 
place : 

To be Captains. 
Commander Charles Codrington Forsyth. 
Commander John Corbett. 
Commander William Eae Rolland. 
Commander Edward Winterton Turnour. 

To be Commanders, 
Lieutenant George Campbell Fowler. 
Lieutenant Edward Frederic Dent. 
Lieutenant William Lowley Staniforth. 
Lieutenant Arthur Metivier Brock. 
Lieutenant his Serene Highness Prince Victor 
of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. 

To be Acting Lieutenants. 
{To he confirmed on passing at the Royal Naval College.) 
The Hon. Albert Denison Somerville Denison. 
Mr, Thomas Keith Hudson. 
Mr. William St. John Sumner Hornby. 
Ml'. Henry Craven St. John. 

To be Master, Mr. John Jones, 



I 



43 



CHAPTER IT. 

AFTER THE BATTLE. 

Trial of Commodore Keppel for loss of the Raleigli — Honourable 
i\cquittal — Visit to the Wounded of Fatshan — Preparations for 
deception of Lord Elgin — List of Casualties at Escape Creek and 
Eatshan. 

Hongkong, June 9. 
When the admiral had returned to his anchorage a 
naval court-martial was held on board the Sibylle upon 
Commodore Keppel and his crew for the loss of the Raleigh. 
The report of the officer sent to survey the spot rendered 
this trial almost a matter of form. It was chiefly remark- 
able for a speech from the commodore, who appeared with 
his breast quite covered with orders and medals, and never 
alluded in any way to himself during the whole of his 
defence. The fact is that no great loss has been sustained 
in the Raleigh. For modern naval warfare, and especially 
in these seas, your old 50-gun sailing ships are useless. 
They are pleasant as marine residences, but for fighting you 
might as well arm your men with bows and arrows. The 
commodore received back his sword, and is left in command 
up the river. 

To-day I visited the wounded men. All the severe cases 
are on board the Hercules. With the exception of two 
cases — one where the poor creature has the back of his head 
shot away, and lingers still with half a brain — the men are 
all doing well. The main deck of the Hercules might be 
envied as an hospital ward by the surgeons of Guy's or Bar- 
tholomew's. Many of the wounds are of the most frightful 
description. They are all caused either by cannon-shot or 
jagged pieces of iron. It is wonderful to find the men so 
cheerful under the pressure of such wounds. I heard no 
moan or sob all the time I was in the ship. Yet there was 



4:4: CHINA. 

one poor fellow who was even then having extracted from 
his shoulder small bits of a comrade's skull, which had been 
smashed and scattered in splinters by a round shot. I 
talked much to Jenkins, the seaman of Keppel's galley, 
whose life Prince Victor saved by timely twisting his hand- 
kerchief over the stump. Jenkins is a very intelligent 
fellow ; he looks calmly at his stump — perhaps he thinks of 
England and Greenwich, and strikes a balance in his mind. 
Upon the whole I must report that up to this present time 
no wounded men could possibly be better cared for than 
those of this Chinese squadron. 

In Hongkong we are now listening for the gun which 
will announce the arrival of the mail. It is a great incon- 
venience to every one here that it is so arranged by the 
authorities that one mail comes in either about twelve hours 
before the other goes out, or about twelve hours after it is 
gone, thus causing uncertainty and most precipitous haste in 
all matters mercantile. Why not arrange the arrivals and 
departures for alternate weeks ? I dare say there is some 
stupid clerk in some inaccessible office who has some stupid 
reason for inflicting this annoyance upon us. 

The merchants have at length resolved to make a demon- 
stration upon the Chinese question. It appears singular 
that they have not done so before; but the politics of Hong- 
kong are very intricate, and there were objections to all 
previous propositions. The Dents have now taken the 
matter in hand, and an address to Lord Elgin is in course 
of signature. 

After the usual congratulations, the address proceeds 
thus : — 

" We venture upon no opinion at present respecting the readjust- 
ment of our relations with the empire at large, though always prepared 
to hold our advice and experience at your lordship's command ; but 
upon that branch of the question which we distinguish as the ' Canton 
difficulty' we would take this, the earliest opportunity, of recording 
our opinion — an opinion founded upon long, reluctant, and we may 
add traditional experience — that an}'' compromise of it, or any sort of 
settlement which shall stop short of the complete humiliation of the 
Cantonese — which shall fail to teach them a wholesome respect for the 
obligations of their own government in its relations with independent 
powers, and a more hospitable reception of the foreigner who resorts 
to their shores for the peaceable purposes of trade, will only result in 



THE merchants' ADDRESS. 45 

further suffering to themselves and further disastrous interruptions 
to us. 

" Many of us have already been heavy sufferers by the present 
difficulty. It must be apparent to your lordship that our best ioterests 
lie xipon the side of peace, and upon the earliest solid peace that can 
be obtained. But, notwithstanding this, we would most earnestly 
deprecate any settlement of the question which should not have 
eliminated from it the very last element of future disoi'der." 

This means, " You must take Canton, my lord, and nego- 
tiate at Pekin with Canton in your possession." Such is 
the opinion of every one here, from the highest to the 
lowest. Even those Chinese who live by gratifying English 
tastes, painting portraits of vessels for uxorious sea-captains, 
or selling puzzles, bamboo chairs, and grass-cloth handker- 
chiefs, are quite of the same opinion. They ask, " Why not 
that soljee man come catchee that city?" 

I am obliged to close my despatch without any tidings of 
the mail. We are, of course, most anxious to know whether 
it brings Lord Elgin, and whether General Ashburnham 
comes down in her from Bengal. I hope to be able to sub- 
join in a postscript a list of killed and wounded, and Mr. 
Secretary Wade's report of the contents of the papers taken 
in the junks. These last, I understand, are rather curious 
than important. 

lOth June, 12 o'clock:. 

After we have closed our despatches, and while the Aden 
is getting her steam up for departure, the mail-boat Singa- 
pore, Captain Grainger, is announced to be entering the 
harbour. She brings General Ashburnham and his staff, 
who all appear to be in good health. They left Bombay on 
the same day that the news of the disasters in India reached 
that city by telegraph. Lord Elgin v/as at Singapore. 



Return of Casualties in the Force engaged in the Capture and Destrtiction 
of Chinese War-Boats in Escape CreeTc, on the 25th of May. 
The JHornet's Pinnace. — Richard Warren, A.B., severely ; Edward 
Roche, A.B., slightly. 

Casualties on the 27th of May at Toung-Kouan. 
The Silylle's Boats. — Henry Mathews, private, R.M., seriously ; 
Thomas M'Donald, A.B., severely ; Richard Hannaford, private, R.M., 
slightly. 



46 CHINA. 

Baleigh's Boats. — Mr. A. Dupries, midshipman, severely ; Mr. Pil- 
kington, midshipman, slightly; William Trewin, A.B., dangerously; 
James Mansell, leading seamen, severely; Edward Pepper, A.B., 
severely ; William Drew, leading seaman, severely ; Luke Sharp, 
private R.M., severely ; William Fogwell, A.B., slightly. 

Tribune's Boats. — Lieut. Norman, bullet through right cheek ; 
William Lampidge, A.B., bullet lodged in left cheek, dangerous ; 
William Nelson, leading seaman, bullet wound, right shoulder; 
Benfield Howe, private, bullet wound, right hand ; Edward Strickland, 
private, bullet wound, upper lip : Robert Groves, sail-mate, bvillet 
•wounds, left hand and leg ; Thomas Clack, private, bullet wound, 
spine, dangerous ; and Henry Halfyer, private, bullet wound, left 
thigh. 

InUexihle's Boats. — Lieut. Bacon, slightly ; Mr. Magrath, Assistant- 
Surgeon, slightly ; William Yeo, boatswain's mate, severely ; Colin 
Grant, A.B., severely ; Thomas Farmer, A.B,, slightly. 

Fury's Boats. — James Carry, gunner's-mate, slightly; George Gro- 
gan, corporal R.M., severely ; Charles O'Donnell, private, severely ; 
William Keechee, A.B., severely ; and James Gibson, leading seaman, 
severely. 

Total wounded, 31. 

A Return of Casualties on Board Her Majesty's Gun-Boats and Boats of 
the Squadron, during the Operations in the FoAshan Creek on Monday, 
the 1st of Jmie : — 



Raleigh. — Commodore's Galley. — Peter Tolhurst, captain of the 
forecastle. Launch. — Thomas Coleman, A.B,, mortally wounded, 
since dead. Pinnace. — John Dart, A.B. ; Simeon Bone, private 
Boyal Marines. 

Nankin. — John Smith, private Boyal Marines, killed on board the 
Hongkong. 

Tribune Barge, — Bichard Harper, A.B. Pinnace. — Mr. H. Barker, 
midshipman, mortally wounded, since dead. 

High-flyer Pinnace. — Mr, E. C, Bryan, master's assistant. 

Niger, First Gig. — George Griffin, A.B., mortally wounded, since 
dead ; Thomas Christian, sergeant Boyal Marine Artillery, killed on 
board the Plover gunboat. 

Hornet, Cutter. — Thomas Cronin, orderly. 

Fury, Gig. — Major Kearney, deputy assistant-quartermaster- 
general, who, being on duty in the Canton Biver, gallantly volunteered 
his service in the boats. 

Plover Gunboat. — Charles Mead, A.B., mortally wounded, since 
dead. 

WOUNDED. 

Raleigh, Commodore's Galley. — Alfred Jenkins, A.B.. loss of left; 
hand, severely ; James Buckley, A.B,, contiisions from splinters, 
slightly ; Edward Eowe, A.B,, contusion of right shoulder by a 



KILLED AND WOUNDED AT FATSHAN. 47 

grapeshot, slightly. Pinnace. — J. S. Graham, lieutenant, contusion, 
slightly ; William Seymour, A.B., flesh wound of left shoulder from 
fragment of a man's skull, severely ; Mark Rideout, A.B., lacerated 
wound and contusion of shoulder by a round shot, severely; John 
Godding, A.B., contusion of shoulder by a grapeshot, severely ; John 
Haffell, A.B., contusion of elbow, splinter, slightly. Launch. — George 
Sackett, A.B., penetrating grapeshot wound of right shoulder, 
severely ; George Payne, A.B., contusion, slightly. First Cutter. — 
Joseph Hatherly, captain of foretop, grape wound, left shoulder, 
severely. Second Cutter. — Mr. E. Pilkington, midshipman, contu- 
sion, slightly. 

Honrjkong Tender. — Edward Braughton, leading seaman, gunshot 
wound of groin, dangerously. 

Calcutta. — Launch. — J. Calister, orderly, right hand and leg contused 
by a round shot, slightly. First Pinnace. — Daniel Toomey, orderly, 
2 C, contused wound of chest and knee by a round shot, severely ; 
Michael Eourke, orderly, contused wound of left leg by a round shot, 
slightly. Second Pinnace. — William Green, orderly, extensive burn 
from a gunpowder explosion, sevei'ely. Landing Party, Poyal Marines. 
— William Collins, private, ditto, severely ; George Pope, private, 
contused wound of chest by a round shot, slightly. 

Sihylle. — Commodore Elliott's Galley. — Mr. H. Hippesley, midship- 
man, spear wound, shghtly. Launch. — Mr. B. Staunch, master's assist- 
ant, contusion of shoulder, slightly ; Eichard Light, captain of foretop, 
ditto, severely ; John Smith, ditto, v/ound of head, slightly. 

Tribune. — Pinnace. — Benjamin Sheldrake, leading seaman, grapeshot 
lodged in lung, dangerously ; William Nelson, A.B., grape wound of 
■wrist, with fracture, severely. 

Niger. — First Gig. — The Hon. A. A. Cochrane, Captain, C.B., grape- 
shot contusion of arm, slightly ; Mr. V/. Potter, gunner, slightly. 
Second Gig. — Henry Searle, sailmaker's mate, slightly. Pinnace. — 
James Pearce, stoker, slightly ; Alfred Durrant, orderly 26, slightly. 

Hornet. — Pinnace. — Emanuel Buchanan, gunner's mate, grape wound 
of arm, dangerously; Thomas Anderson, A.B., wound of shoulder, 
severely ; James Eively, A.B., wound of neck, dangerously ; David 
Aitchison, leading seaman, wound of scalp, slightly ; John Copping, 
bombardier, Royal Marine Artillery, wound of arm, slightly ; Henry 
Wyatt, private Royal Marines, wound of neck, slightly. 

Elk. — William Walker, boatswain's mate, gunshot wound in right 
lumbar region, slightly ; H. Starkes, private Royal Marines, splinter 
wound in right thigh, slightly, 

(7r?tzse?'.— Edward Mitchell, private Royal Marines, slightly. 

Haughty Gun-boat. — Mark Patterson, A, B., wound of wrist, slightly. 



48 



CHAPTEH V. 

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS. 

Diversion of the Chinese Expedition to India — Speculations as to 
SufiBciency of our pre.sent force — Conduct of Yeh — Difficulty of 
obtaining Information as to progress of Eebellion — Wang, the 
Chinese Admiral — Incidents of the War — Rumours from Home — 
Foolish Talk in England about the Poisoned Bread. 

TiiE intelligence from India has been the single topic of 
interest here since the arrival of the last mail. We ai-e not 
speculating, as you probably are, how this spirit of disaffec- 
tion, which seems to run along the ground and spring up 
like fires from naphtha wells, was first lit up. Nobody 
here asks whether we are to pay in blood and treasure for 
the freaks of a fanatic colonel, or whether the horror of the 
outbreak is due to the curious felicity which managed to 
outrage all Mohammedan and Hindoo prejudices by a single 
act, and unite the two races upon their only point of sym- 
pathy — a horror of pig. We selfish Hongkongians think 
only what effect the outbreak will have upon the Chinese 
war. The 5th and the 19th regiments are to be stopped at 
Singapore and to be diverted to Calcutta. If Lord Can- 
ning's distresses should be great, instructions have been left 
at Singapore to honour his draughts for troops to any extent. 
Meanwhile, our available land force for carrying on war 
with the Chinese empire consists of two generals, a very 
large body of officers, and about 1,000 men. For a dash we 
might undoubtedly take 500 marines from the ships, and 
from Macao fort, and borrow a couple of thousand blue 
jackets from the ships. These, with the aid of the vessels 
that can float within range of the city, and perhaps of the 
400 sepoys in this town, v/ould be quite enough to blow 
their way through Canton. But to seize the city and to 
hold it, and to be able to march forth and give battle to the 



DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING INFORMATION. 49 

army "whicli would certainly be brought together on the 
heights, are very different matters. Even with the brigade 
of marines that may now be soon expected from England, 
we shall not be strong enough for these purposes, according 
to all scientific military calculations. So rife is the convic- 
tion here, that nothing can be attempted for three months, 
that I had almost determined to go hence to Delhi, and 
investigate the state of things there on the spot. But six- 
teen days each way by sea, and 1,000 miles each way by 
dak, render the step too hazardous. I should possibly 
spend £500, and three months' time, only to find that the 
mutiny was quelled before I reached Delhi, and that Canton 
had fallen, and the expedition had gone northwards before I 
returned to Hongkong. 

Delay, however unavoidable, is most unfortunate for our 
interests. We want a peaceful country to trade with and a 
strong government to treat with. Yet every success short 
of actual occupation of the city only weakens the authority 
without breaking the obstinacy of the rulers. The rumours 
that reach us from the interior all say that the rebels are 
making head again, and that some common course of action 
has been established between bodies which had before acted 
independently of each other. I place no absolute faith in 
any statement of fact made by a Chinese about his own 
country. The merchants here have the most important 
pecuniary interests in obtaining information as to the move- 
ments of the rebels. "Whether certain roads are open, and 
whether the produce of certain provinces can come down, 
are questions of money import. To them knowledge is 
dollars. But I have been told by the heads of the most 
enterprising houses that this information cannot be bought. 
They send out their spies, and the spies having passed their 
time at the nearest spot out of sight in drinking samshou, 
and sleeping in the shade, come back with most precise 
information — perhaps, for this has happened, with a docu- 
ment purporting to be a copy of the last memorial addressed 
by Yeh to the Emperor. Time, however, shows that all 
this is falsehood and forgery. It is falsehood and it is 
forgery, not because the spy could not get real information 
for money, but because he can invent tor nothing. 

E 



50 CKIXA. 

I put no faith, therefore, in specific news from the 
interior. When I am told that envoys from the rebels 
have held interviews with the elders of all the villages and 
towns on their western line of march, and that a compact 
has been entered into that their advance shall be unresisted, 
that private property shall be spared, and that none but 
mandarins shall be massacred, I do not receive it, although 
coming from the best available authority, as reliable intel- 
lisrence. But these rumours are so consistent with the 
natural sequence of effect from cause, that I believe they 
have some foundation in fact. The rebellion was quenched 
for a time in the blood of the 100,000 human creatures, who 
in the years 1855 and 1856 were put to death in the 
execution-ground of Canton. Subsequently more favoured 
criminals were turned into hovels built expressly for the 
purpose, and found there a knife, a fatal dose of opium, and 
a rope^ and were told to spare their families the ignominy 
ot ?- public execution by a voluntary death. But the west 
has again risen to ])rotect the fugitives who come among 
among them with dollars in their pockets, and the east has 
found new proselytes to legitimacy and plunder. Meanwhile 
scarcity presses more or less heavily upon the whole popu- 
lation. In Canton the rich are flying, and the poor are 
starving. Even in Pekin (I speak on the authority of a 
memorial which the authorities allow to appear in the 
Gazette) a man's labour will hardly suffice to procure rice for 
his own belly, whereas formerly it would feed him and his 
family. While physical distress thus swells the ranks of the 
insurgents, Yeh remains impassible as ever. During the 
bombardment of Canton he was accustomed to retire within 
a grotto made of English cotton bales and smoke his pipe 
calmly while the shells were falling.""* He preserves his usual 
habits. Howqua goes to him, and states the necessity for 
yielding; Yeh stares at him and says nothing. Howqua 

* I think it right to say that I asked Yeh, when on board th& 
Inflexible, if this report were true, and he emphatically denied it. The 
use of cotton bales for purposes of fortification, was, however, well 
understood by both parties. The public accounts show that large-- 
sums were paid to merchan<-3 by our own authorities for cotton thus 
used. 



INSIDE CANTON. 51 

retires ; and some days after comes back witt other Chinese 
merchants to beg that the trade may at least be ojDened with 
Macao, so that tea may go down and be exchanged for rice. 
Yeh still answers only by a silent stare. The Chinese now 
remember or invent a romantic history for their proconsul. 
They say that Yeh's first wife and all her kin were murdered 
by the Cantonese, and that in long past days he vowed to be 
revenged by the destruction of their city — a fiction by no 
means improbable so far as the murder is concerned, for 
the Cantonese would murder any one, but somewhat incom- 
patible with the notorious fact that by his vigorous measures 
he preserved the city from being sacked by the rebels. 

This state of things cannot long continue. One man, 
with a few hundreds of pirates and robbers, miscalled 
soldiers, cannot keep down a flourishing population of 
a million of people, especially when every one of that million 
has seen the fires and heard the explosions that told the 
destruction of the Imperial fleet. If we delay to take 
Canton, it is to be feared that the rebels will anticipate us. 
If this should happen, what are we to do ? They are not 
much better affected to the " outer barbarians " than the 
mandarins are. We shall then have no one to fight with 
and no one to treat with. In driving out the rebels we 
shall only be doing the work of the Emperor, and our 
claims to compensation would be presented to an exhausted 
treasury. On the other hand, we ought to know more of 
Chinese politics than the best-informed among us yet know, 
before we undertake to guarantee the Tartar dynasty in 
return for commercial advantages. Since I have been in 
the colony every one has been not only willing, but even 
emulous, to enable me to inform the public at home. From 
the men who study the language with philological enthu- 
siasm, and who speak to the Chinese in their own idiom, 
to the heads of those mercantile houses which, Janus- 
like, keep their European eyes for European markets, 
and look upon China only with the Chinese eyes of their 
brokers and compradors — all have given me every paper and 
every fact which they possess. I hope I have not been 
negligent in the use of opportunities ; but the result of all 
I hear and see is a settled conviction that at present we knom 

E 2 



52 CHINA. 

nothing — absolutely nothing — of the nature of those elements 
which are at work inside China. Crotchets and theories and 
confident statements are rife, both in conversation and in 
print 'j but they are all the offspring of vain imaginings, 
not sober deductions from facts. In this uncertainty we 
have only one obvious thing to do — to seize Canton and hold 
it against all comers. Masters of Canton, we can influence 
Patshan, and make our power felt among the piratical popu- 
lation of the ninety-six villages that lie among the creeks 
of the Canton River. But we must occupy Canton at once 
if possible, before the French and Americans come to 
furtlier complicate the situation : if not, then at the earliest 
moment that our chiefs think themselves equal to the task. 
I liave no reason to say that timid councils will prevail hero 
Avhen the time arrives for action ; but if such should be the 
case, it will be a grave national misfortune. Keppel ought 
to be recalled, or shut up, or kept out of the way, or put 
under very stringent orders, if any council of war should be 
concocting some scientific scheme for taking Canton secundum 
artem. That impatient commodore is capable of spoiling 
all their plans by making a dash at the place and carrying it 
in as many hours as they allow months for the task. But 
if it were a Sebastopol it must be taken, if we are deter- 
mined to keep up any trade with China. The north is quiet, 
because the north has felt our power, and believes that Canton 
will be made to feel it, but for no other reason. 

The Edinburgh Reviewer, who discusses the China question 
in the number of that review just received, is wrong in 
many matters, — in all that he writes of Hongkong 
ludicrously wrong ;* but he is undoubtedly right when he 

* I am by no means prepared to become the advocate of Honfjlcon^j 
as the English commercial station, but surely, after making all fair 
allowance for the very natural and honest prejudices of this reviewer, 
it is absurd to speak of this great city and crowded harbour as "a 
harbour for outlaws and smugglers," — a city which contains 60,000 
inhabitants, before which shipping to the amount of 800,000 tons cast 
anchor, and which, so long as we have no other possession, must be the 
bonding warehouse of all our exports to China. While I am speaking 
of this article I must add, that it is not fair in a public writer, in dis- 
cussing the question of the opium trade, to ignore these important and 
notorious facts : — that opium is most extensively grown in China, at a 



ADMIRAL WANG. 53 

affirms that "The people in and around Canton now con- 
fidently believe that although we beat the regular soldiers 
during the war, their own volunteer corps could expel us 
from the country." I have heard the Chinese merchants say 
that at Macao, almost in the same words, — " Inglishmen too 
much brave in devilship, but no too much large heart catchee 
that city." 

Some doubt was expressed as to whether we really had 
the great Wang himself for an adversary at Fatshan. This 
is now abundantly cleared up, for among the documents 
brought to the admiral some days after the battle was an 
ornamental paper carefully incased in a double pewter 
envelope. Upon being spread before the all-expounding Mr. 
Wade, he at once read it off as Wang's commission. It is a 
curious document, but too long for me to copy. 

Poor Wang ! All our officers pity him as a foeman 
worthy of their steel. He once went into action against 
some pirates on the paddle-box of an English steamer, and 
then wrote a letter to say that he had received some aid 
from the barbarians. He is lurking somewhere in close con- 
cealment, for Yeh is said to have declared that he will 
decapitate him directly he can lay hands upon him.* 

Our sailors are just like big schoolboys. The Chinese 
tie ribands round their cannon, and Jack, when he boarded 
the junks, usually untied this ornament and transferred it 
to his own gun in the bows of his boom-boat. As Lieu- 
tenant Hallowes was steering his boat back from Fatshan, he 
had to pass between two junks already blazing, and with 
guns pointed across the boat's course. " Give way, men," 
he said, expecting that the junks would go up or the guns 
go off before he could get clear ; but his crew, although 
they had good store of flags, had forgotten the ribands. 

price very far below that winch is paid for the Indian opium ; that it 
is smoked openly by mandarins at the court and by judges on the 
bench, and that not one word apjDears in any piiblic document against 
the traffic since the course of exchange has turned in favour of the 
Chinese, and this drug is paid for in silk and teas instead of in silver. 
I am no more an advocate for opium smuggling than I am for undue 
pi'eferences for Hongkong, but I am a strenuous advocate for giving 
the public the whole truth so far as we can obtain it. 
* Wang was afterwa,rds killed in an action with the Chinese rebels. 



54 CHINA. 

" Beg pardon, sir/' said the coxswain, speaking for the rest, 
" we've got no ribands on the gun ; mightn't we just go and 
take away them things 1 " To their great chagrin, the officer 
did not think it quite consistent with his duty to get his men 
blown up for such an object. 

Some men were left all night in charge of the fort, and as 
they had little to eat and nothing to drink, it was difficult to 
make a jolly night of it. They hit upon the expedient of 
collecting all the gingals and Chinese spear-rockets together, 
lighting a fire under them, and sitting in a half-circle. As 
the gingals from time to time heated, and the flames reached 
the rockets, they exploded ; so the garrison of the fort had 
excitement and fireworks half the night through. 

The naval exploits have, of course, been upon a smaller 
scale since the 1st of June. The Samson, however, 
managed to secure five pirate junks which had sent detach- 
ments on shore to plunder a village. On the approach of 
the Samsoi-Cs boats the pirates, as usual, fired their guns 
and jumped overboard ; but the villagers, meanwhile, had 
turned out to see the fight, and as the pirates landed they 
were all knocked on the head with bamboo poles. Captain 
Corbett, also, in the Injiexible, got hold of a pirate — a noto- 
rious scourge. 

Ten junks laden with rice were sailing gaily up the river 
to Canton, when it was intimated to the commodore that 
they had very much the cut of mandarin junks. They were 
accordingly detained. Great was the indignation of the 
Chinese of Hongkong. They were declared to be Hong- 
kong property. Innocent traders were being ruined 1 
There ought, at least, to have been some notice of a block- 
ade. " Why for you no send chit 1 " Orders were sent to 
release them ; but Keppel, who is tenacious in his opinions, 
v/as not quite satisfied. He ordered some of the rice-bags 
to be brought on deck, and when this was done, the junks 
were found to have each a fair cargo of guns, soldiers' 
jackets, and other warlike stores — including, it is said, several 
cases of revolvers. 

Such are the little incidents of the war which Queen 
Victoria is waging against Mr. Commissioner Yeh. 

Meanwhile the screw steam-corvette Esh has arrived from 



THE POISONED BREAD. 55 

Panama, and the Pearl has also come in. The Phlegeihon, 
French steamer of war, brings lis news that the Shannon 
arrived at Singapore on the 11th, and was there when she 
left ; but you will probably have later news from Singapore 
than I can send you. 

The Encounter and the Saracen are gone to Siam ; the 
former to take the Siamese Embassy to Suez, and thence to 
proceed home. The wreck of the Raleigh is advertised to 
be sold by auction on the 29th inst. 

Apart from the Indian intelligence, the news from England 
brought by the mail on the 10th was that the instructions 
from England were to occupy Formosa ; that some com- 
fortable twaddle had found out that Alum's bread was not 
poisoned ; and that the Americans have resolved to let us 
fight, while they manage all the trade during our operations, 
and participate in all the results of our success. The state- 
ment as to Formosa I shall not believe until I hear it upon 
very certain authority. As to the Alum bread, there is some 
of it in England, and several loaves of it are here. If the 
individual who, at a safe distance, talks so sceptically upon 
this matter, will eat half a pound of this bread, it will termi- 
nate all discussion, and set the question at rest in a most 
satisfactory manner. 

Mr. Tarrant, of this city, has revived the subject by 
bringing an action against Alum for selling unwholesome 
bread. On Monday the case came on for trial. The 
Attorney -General, abandoning all suggestion of guilty 
knowledge in the defendant, rested his case upon the 
common-law obligation cast upon a baker to sell only 
bread fit for the food of man. The presence of arsenic 
was fully proved, and the jury returned a verdict for 
1,010 dollars. The point of law is of course reserved.* 

* This was decided in Mr. Tarrant's favour ; but I never heard 
whether he got the money. 



5Q 




CHAPTER VI. 

IMPRESSIONS OF HONGKONG. 

Want of Telegraphic Communication — Victoria City — Compradors — 
Extortion of Chinese Mandarins from British Subjects — Canton 
English — Climate of Hongkong — Sanitary Condition of its Inhabi- 
tants — Flora and Fauna — Social Qualities of the English Residents 
— Rumour of Abdication of the Chinese Emperor. 

Hongkong, June 23. 
Having no great quantity of news to communicate, I 
take the advantage of the leisure to gossip a little about 
this island of Hongkong and the city of Victoria. And, 
first, let me ask, — Why is it that we are so far from home ? 
Why is it that our rulers are yet in ignorance of the critical 
condition of our Indian empire 1 Why have we 9,000 
miles between England and her Eastern dominions untra- 
versed by a telegraph ? I was much struck in Algeria by 
the wonderful netAvork of wires whereby the French have 
connected all their military posts in Africa, and by the care 
with which they improved and preserved, and the vast 
advantages they derived from, their facilities of comm.uni- 
cation. If the telegraph across the Mediterranean is not 
completed, it has at least been commenced. Yet here 
we have a possession upon which the eyes of the mother 
country are fixed — for trifling with the safety of which 
a House of Commons was dissolved — which is one of the 
greatest tributaries to the river of our national wealth — 
which must always be the pivot of great operations in 
war or commerce, and not an effort is made to bring it 
within hail of England. The French cannot colonize, but 
they can govern. Had they our Eastern empire, Aden, 
Bengal, Calcutta, and even Hongkong, would by this time 
have been brought within five minutes of the Louvre. This 
is one of those few essentials wherein economy is fatuity, 
and money is no measure of value. A great mind would 



THE CHINESE COMPRADOR. 57 

not hesitate to bind together every one of those military 
posts which form the stepping-stones by which we English- 
men pass from dominion to dominion round the world ; a 
mind of very moderate enterprise might contemplate the 
immediate laying down of wires to connect England with 
Alexandria, and Alexandria with Aden. Yet our folks at 
home are hesitating and chattering — chattering about un- 
important sums, favouring impossible schemes for carrying 
wires across wild countries and through untamed tribes, 
when they ought to be bending their energies to do the 
work. You will be sending troops to India when the 
danger no longer exists, or when the aid given is no longer 
equal to the increased necessity. You will be sending fleets 
and armies from England to China after peace has been 
concluded. In matters of government, nothing is so ex- 
pensive as ignorance. The money thus wasted would make 
your telegraph a dozen times over. 

Let me chronicle some of my first impressions of British 
China before the surprise has worn away. The first great 
astonishment to a man who recollects Sir Francis Maitland's 
report, that there was anchorage for ships and room on the 
island for one house, is to find many merchant-princes living 
in many gorgeous palaces, a city two miles long, every 
article of home luxury except a bracing breeze, and fleets 
which could feed a principality and conquer an empire. 
"When he has realized this fact, his next idea is what an 
utterly helpless creature he is in the midst of all this newly 
created greatness. However kind and self-denying the 
friend to whom you are committed may be, you soon find 
out that he knows no more the means of obtaining creature 
comforts than you do. Every resident, be he married or 
single, has his '"'major domo," his "comprador," a long-tailed, 
sleek Chinaman, who is his general agent, keeps his money, 
pays his bills, does all his marketing, hires his servants, and 
stands security for their honesty, and of course cheats him 
unmercifully. The advantage is, that he does not allow any 
one else to cheat him. 

The comprador is the link between the barbarian English- 
man and the civilized world of China. The Englishman 
knows very little of China beyond what the comprador 



58 CHINA. 

chooses to tell him, and the comprador chooses to tell him 
nothing worth knowing. Of course your comprador is a 
rich man. He is worth from 5,000 dollars to 40,000 dollars. 
There are two here who are reputed to be worth 100,000 
dollars. One of these was " squeezed " (this is the term 
used) to the extent of 10,000 dollars by the mandarins, in 
order to pay the expenses of the present war. Thus, as we 
found the cannon on board the junks primed with the best 
Dartford powder, so we see that Yeh pays his braves with 
English plunder quietly accumulated in Hongkong. The 
process is this, — the mandarins seize the father, mother, 
sisters, and brothers of the juicy comprador, and submit 
them to a course of slow torture until the squeeze has had 
its due effect. By this highly effective mode the mandarins 
keep all the Chinese in Hongkong under their control, 
and draw large sums from the colony. When we come .to 
settle with them, we ought to insist on all this money being 
repaid ; we ought to naturalize the Chinamen who live in 
our Chinese dominions ; and we ought to make extortion 
from them an offence to be provided for by treaty. Unless 
you protect these people, you cannot expect them to look 
upon you as their masters.'"^' 

The elegant Greek slave imposed his language and his 
modes of thought upon his barbarous Koman master ; our 
civilized Chinese attendants have communicated to us outer 
barbarians the syntax of the Chinese tongue. They have 
made for us a new English language, wherein sounds once 
familiar to us as English words startle us by new significa- 
tions. According to the canons of criticism they have well 
done, — 

*' Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum, 
Reddiderit junctura novum." 

Horace must have stolen his ars poetica from Confucius. 
My friend introduced me to his comprador thus : 
" You see gentleman, — you tawkee one piecey coolie one 
piecey boy — larnt pigeon, you savey, no number one foolo — 
you make see this gentleman — you make him house pigeon." 

* I would ask attention to these observations. Their necessity and 
their importance have by no means passed away. 



CANTOK ENGLISH. 6'9 

This was said with great rapidity, and in my innocence I 
believed that my friend was- speaking Chinese fluently. He 
was only talking " Canton English." Translated into the 
vernacular it would stand, — 

" You see this gentleman, — you must engage for him a 
coolie and a boy — people who understand their business, 
you know, not stupid fellows ; you will bring them to 
him, and then manage to get him a lodging and furnish 
it." 

To whom the polite comprador, leniter atterens caudam, 
replied, — 

" Hab got. I catchee one piecey coolie, catchee one 
piecey boy. House pigeon number one dearo, no hab got. 
Soger man hab catchee house pigeon." 

'• Must got." 

" Heuigh." 

The basis of this " Canton English," which is a tongue 
and a literature, consists of turning the " r " into the " 1," 
adding final vowels to every word, and a constant use of 
" savey " for " know," '• talkee " for " speak," " piecey " for 
piece/' " number one " for " first class," but especially and 
above all the continual employment of the word '• pigeon." 
Pigeon means business in the most extended sense of the 
word. " Heaven pigeon hab got " means that church ser- 
vice has commenced ; " Jos pigeon " means the Bhuddist 
ceremonial ; " Any pigeon Canton ?" means " Have any 
operations taken place at Canton "? " " That no boy pigeon, 
that coolie pigeon," is the form of your servant's remon- 
strance if you ask him to fill your bath or take a letter. It 
also means profit, advantage, or speculation. " Him Wang 
too much foolo, him no savey, vely good pigeon hab got," 
was the commentary of the Chinese pilot upon the Eatshan 
Creek business. 

Until you can not only speak this language fluently, but 
also, which is far more difficult, understand it when spoken 
rapidly in a low monotonous voice, all communication witk 
your servants is impossible. 

The second morning after I had been installed in my 
dwelling my new "boy" Ah Lin, who sleeps on a mat 
outside my door, and v^^hom I suspect to live principally 



60 CHINA. 

upon successful rat-hunts,* for he knocks down about three 
per diem with a bamboo pole as they run about the room — 
this Ah Lin, drawing up my musquito curtains, presenting 
me with the six-o'clock cup of tea, and staring at me with 
his little round eyes, gravely remarked, " Missa Smith one 
small piecey cow child hab got." It was a long time before 
I comprehended that, it being part of a " boy's " duty to 
inform his master of the social events of the colony, he 
wished to give me to understand that Mrs. Smith had 
presented her husband with a daughter. 

It makes a bachelor laugh, perhaps it would make an 
exiled family-man almost cry, to hear this grotesque carica- 
ture of the language of the nursery. 

The climate of Hongkong has not presented itself to me 
with a pleasant aspect. The city of Victoria is on the 
wrong side of the sugar-loaf. That Victoria Peak shuts out 
the south-west monsoon which blows in grateful breezes 
upon the southern coast ; the heat, therefore, is a stagnant, 
up and down, fierce, often reflected heat — a heat there is no 
escaping — which finds you out in your hiding-place in a 
shady verandah, and shoots across from the white face of 
the opposite house, or up from the surface of the white 
road J or down at an obtuse angle from the dark cliff of 
decomposing granite. We new arrivals are told that it is 
nothing to what it will be in August ; but as every 
European body is already covered with a red rash descrip- 
tively called the "prickly heat," reputed to be wholesome 
and felt to be intolerable, we agree that it is impossible that 
a handful of extra degrees of Fahrenheit can make much 
difference. 

These are our hot days ; but the climate is not without 
the charm of variety. Sometimes we wake in the morning 
to the sound of rushing waters. There is a cascade in the 
sky. As much water falls in four hours as would make wet 
weather in England for a month. Then out comes the sun, 
and the city is one hot vapour-bath. Everything is per- 
meated by the steam, and your clothes mildew as you sit 
still and groan. Towards evening you take advantage of a 

* Erroneous first impressions. Ah Lin would scorn such food. 



THE HONGKONG CLIMATE. 61 

lull and go out to dinner, borne like a Guy Fawkes upon a 
bamboo chair, with two coolies staggering and gasping under 
your John-Bullish ponderosity. You lind every one as- 
sembled, in white jackets and white trousers, in a large 
suite of rooms containing twenty open windows and twenty 
open doors. Suddenly the sides open and the deluge 
descends, the accompanying tempest sweeps fiercely through 
every aperture, the doors slam and the verandah-blinds 
clash, rheumatisms and agues riot boisterously about ; while 
in mockery of the windy turmoil the coolie, who has 
crouched in one corner of the room absorbed in the ecstasies 
of an opium-dream, continues to pull his ordinary gentle 
pull at the madly swaying punkah. Then you ask those 
white-clad convives how they can face such a douche bath of 
draughts in such feeble clothing, and they confess the 
horrible hypocrisy of the Hongkong toilet. Underneath 
those thin white garments every one of them, except the 
inexperienced recorder of these first impressions, is clad from 
throat to toe in an undercovering of thick flannel. They 
promise us four months of beautiful winter weather, mildly 
bracing as an English spring. You might as well thus try 
to console the ice palace that was built upon the Neva. 
Before these winter months come we shall be racked with 
rheumatisms and expanded with furnace heats. Yet Hong- 
kong is very healthy. Scarcely any English die here. True; 
but there is an enormous consumption of quinine and blue 
pill, and when these lose their efiect, most Englishmen take 
a Peninsular and Oriental steamer. It is a mere question, 
then, of a preposition, whether they are to be carried oft 
from or on the island. 

With such weather we must not wonder that dysentery 
and diarrhoea, and ague are rather prevalent among the 
seamen and marines who are in the ships and in the fort up 
the river ; or that the marines who, on the 1st of June, 
passed many hours in the paddy-fields up to their waists in 
stagnant water, contribute largely to the sick-list ; nor am 
I astonished to hear that the large military hospital upon 
this island has rather more than its average number of 
occupants. On the other hand, we must acknowledge that 
all the diseases in this climate are below the waist. We 



62 CHIITA. 

never hear that hacking cough which runs like the fire of 
an awkward squad through the congregation of an English 
church. I brought out a model of this truly British pest 
with me, but left it behind in the Mediterranean. 

I cannot report very favourably of the " fauna," or the 
" flora " of the island. Ornamental trees grow very well 
when planted and nurtured, and some flowers may be culled 
in a distant nook called the " Happy Valley," a spot hard 
bordering upon a wretched village and a squalid population ; 
but the natural vegetation seems to be a coarse moss, eaten 
by no quadruped. At any rate, I never saw any four-footed 
thing grazing upon that green mountain, which rises in full 
aspect of my window, and upon which, as the rains com- 
mence, I can see the torrents form. Sometimes there is a 
buffalo seen on the island, but he is usually on his way to 
the slaughter-house. A cow I never saw ; yet there is milk. 
But that milk is used by few and shuddered at by many. 
Whence it comes is the darkest mystery of Hongkong 
economics. The only quadruped that could be supposed to 
produce it is the pig — for pigs do exist in the island ; but 
it is whispered as a caution, and with oblique glance at the 
milk-j ug, that the Chinese matron herself — but enough ; 
very few people take milk except that which is sent out in 
tins. The horse exists in a high state of domesticity. As 
in Attica, so in Hongkong, there is small footing and little 
forage for horses. In both localities the animal was useless 
and expensive, and greatly in vogue. Strepsiades, at Hong- 
kong, dreams as constantly of horses as did Phidippides at 
Athens. A badly bred Arab, worth £20 at Algiers, and 
dElO at Tattersall's, is worth £250 at Yictoria. There is a 
racecourse round which he will run once a year, and there 
are two miles of tolerable road along which he may be 
ridden daily by a long-booted and hunting-whip-bearing 
proprietor, not scorning exiguis equitare campis. The buf- 
falo and the horse, therefore, exist in a highly artificial 
condition upon this island ; but I could not afford ta 
exclude them from my notice of animated nature in Hong- 
kong, seeing that the materials for observation on that 
subject are so very limited. In recompense for the small 
interest which the island can afford to the equine, bovine. 



TORMENTS. 63 

and ovine genera, it is pleasant to be able to testity that 
the entomologist and the man curious in reptilia may find 
constant amusement. The winged cockroach is so finely 
developed, and so rich in fecundity, that specimens may be 
seen at all times, and in the most handsome drawing-rooms, 
crawling over the floors and tables by day, in size like mice, 
and banging against the lamp glasses at night, in size like 
birds. The spiders are so colossal that you wonder how 
they can have fed themselves to such a size, and yet left so 
many flies undevoured. The mosquitoes are so clever in 
insinuating themselves through your fortress of gauze, and 
they so keenly cut slices out of your fleshy parts, that you 
hail the dawn of day with the sensations of an Abyssinian 
ox. The serpent tribe find the island favourable to their 
growth, for it was only a short time since that a Kegulus, 
in the uniform of a British colonel, was brought to a stand 
by a cobra five feet long — " serpens forteritosoe Tiiagnitu- 
dioiis" He was destroyed, happily, without any loss on the 
side of the British. The victory was rendered to an un- 
grateful country,. for the last mail brings intelligence that 
the field allowance is stopped. The officers see their dollars 
pass in this dear colony as shillings, and they gently com- 
plain that it is " hard lines." I confess I think so too. It 
is a small economy at best. I have already spoken of the 
fatness and fertility of the Hongkong rats. When Minu- 
tius, the dictator, was swearing Flaminius in as his master 
of the horse, we are told by Plutarch that a rat chanced to 
squeak, and the superstitious people compelled both officers 
to resign their posts. Office v/ould be held under great 
uncertainty in Hongkong if a similar superstition pre- 
vailed. Sir John Bowring has just been swearing in General 
Ashburnham as member of the Colonial Council, and if the 
rats were silent they showed unusual modesty. They have 
forced themselves, however, into a state paper. Two hun- 
dred rats are destroyed every night in the gaol. Each 
morning the Chinese prisoners see with tearful eyes and 
watering mouths a pile of these delicacies cast out in waste. 
It is as if Christian prisoners were to see scores of white 
sucking-pigs tossed forth to the dogs by Mahomedan gaolers. 
At last they could refrain no longer. Daring the punish- 



64 CHINA. 

ment of tail-cutting, which follows any infraction of prison- 
discipline, they first attempted to abstract the delicacies. 
Foiled in this, they took the more manly course. They 
indicted a petition in good Chinese, proving from Confucius 
that it is sinful to cast away the food of man, and praying 
that the meat might be handed over to them to cook and 
eat. This is a fact, and if General Thompson doubts it, I 
recommend him to move for a copy of the correspondence. 

I may not, however, close this gossiping column of first 
impressions without saying that, despite the difficulties of 
climate and of space, the Europeans in Hongkong do not 
seem very unhappy. Colonial politics interpose tlieir difii- 
culties as colonial politics always will ; but, these apart, I 
know no place where social intercourse is more frank and 
cordial. Tlie common tie of civilization is a common bond 
of brotherhood. 

Jmie liih, 1 p.m. 

The Singapore starts for England in an hour. The mail 
from England has not arrived. We hear that the Shannon 
Avas to leave Singapore on the 17th ; but as she has not 
come in, Lord Elgin may possibly have remained for further 
communication with Lord Canning. There is a rumour 
prevalent among the Chinese — although, as they say, " no 
man can talkee true " — that the Emperor of China, terrified 
by the insurrectionary movements and the sufierings of his 
people from scarcity in the north, had abandoned his 
throne.''^ I believe this rumour to be altogether unfounded. 
We have here the Pelcin Gazette up to the 18th of May, at 
which time the announcements show that the court routine 
was uninterrupted. We have the rumour from Shanghai, 
and I think it must be older than the date of our last 
Gazette. The Chinese are constantly putting false reports 
in circulation. 

* This piece of news was current in all the China newspapers ; 
hut turned out, as I anticipated, to be quite without foundation. 



65 



CHAPTER VIL 

HOXGKOXG AND MACAO. 

Arrival of Lord Elgin — Sanitary State of Hongkong — Insecurity of 
its Waters — Eli Boggs, the Pirate — Necessity for Disarming the 
Junks— Macao — The Wreck of the Raleiglt — Killing Time at 
Victoria — Lord Elgin's Intended Journey to the North — Eemarks 
upon the Policy of such a Proceeding — Indian Troops for China — 
Strategic Capabilities of Canton — Canton must be Captured — Lord 
Elgin's Answer to the Merchants' Address. 

Hongkong, July 8. 
Lord Elgin has arrived. 

It was quite time that something should happen to break 
the dreary monotony of existence here. The last mail did 
not arrive, and ve have only just learnt that the Erin 
steamer was wrecked. The Shannon, which brought Lord 
Elgin, brought us no news of any description, except that 
the Simoom was gone on to Calcutta with the troops from 
the Mauritius. 

The sickly season is doing its work. Of the 600 men 
who now form the strength of the 59th, there are 150 in 
hospital.* The proportion is still greater among the blue- 

* This regiment has been at Hongkong for eight years, and there 
are not ten men of those who originally landed now left. The climate, 
the samshoo, and other causes which I can only glance at, have melted 
all its strength away, and it is quite wonderful that it was able to behave 
so well at the capture of Canton. I was told, although the statement 
seems quite incredible, that upwards of 2,000 men have been buried 
or sent home permanently invalided since the 59th have been at Hong- 
kong, and that the drafts for this regiment have spoilt two battalions. 
The expenditure of the flower of our English manhood in such stations 
as this, and the possibility of mitigating the evil by a judicious and 
more rapid cycle round all our foreign possessions, form a subject far 
too large to be discussed in a foot-note ; but I am convinced, by very 
careful investigation, that no efforts of a commanding officer can keep 
a European regiment permanently stationed at Hongkong in a state 
joi military efficiency. 



66 CHINA. 

jackets and marines up the river. Happily, however, the 
Hongkong fever has not reappeared in its old terrible 
malignity. Although fever, dysentery, diarrhoea, and ague 
are rite, deaths are not numerous. There is plenty of hos- 
pital-room, and the surgeons can hold every case well in 
hand. Precautions also are multiplied with a praiseworthy 
minuteness. Every sentry has sherry and bitters given him 
to fortify his stomach against the night miasma ; the ships 
are alternately moved down to the healthy islands at the 
Bogue ; and the expulsion of our old friend, the Mandarin 
of Chuenpee, was because his fort was wanted for sanitary 
purposes. 

The fevr officers and civilians who are daring enough to 
go out in the sun, try to escape from themselves by a voyage 
round the island, or a trip to Macao. I have accomplished 
both these achievements. The voyage round the island was 
performed in a private pleasure-steamer, and, notwithstand- 
ing the presence of a well-filled refrigerator, was the hottest 
thing I ever did in my life. Stanley, at the back of the 
island, is a native village and an English barrack. It stands 
upon a pretty isthmus, with the Chinese Sea breathing its 
south-west monsoon into its face, and a tranquil, landlocked 
bay rippling against its feet. They say that bay is not 
large enough or deep enough for the fleet of merchantmen 
the China trade employs. It is now used as a bathiDg-place 
for the troops, as the shelter of small fishing- craft, and as a 
resource of very hungry pirates, who at night or early dawn 
have sometimes dashed into the bay and attempted to carry 
off fishing-boats under the eyes of the garrison. It is a 
voyage of forty miles round this little island. 

It is scarcely more to Macao, and, although the fate of 
the Thistle and the Queen has rendered the perils of that 
passage more notorious, I doubt whether there are more 
pirates lurking in the archipelago between Victoria and 
Macao than in the islets at the back of Hongkong. 
"While we gaily steamed along in our little toy steamer 
several times did some vicious-looking junks stand down 
towards us, their large mat-sails looking like the wings of a 
bird of prey, and heavy cannon frowning mischief from their 
desk. But they alvfays stood off again when they found 



PERILS OF THE MACAO PASSAGE. 67 

we were a party of eight Englishmen, with revolvers in our 
belts and rifles lying close at hand. We grow used to pre- 
cautions in this land. Some days since, I went to dinner at 
a house high up on the hill, and, expressing some surprise 
at seeing all the guests solemnly depositing their revolvers 
as they entered, was told that a few weeks since a headless 
trunk was found in the ditch that passes by the wall of 
the garden. Seven days ago Mr. Chisholm Anstey, her 
Majesty's Attorney-General, was at Macao upon some 
professional business, and, going out to enjoy a swim before 
breakfast, took his comprador with him to guard his clothes. 
Coming back to the city, the comprador, who was a native 
of that neighbourhood, remarked that six fellov/s, of whose 
antecedents he had some knowledge, had posted themselves 
three on each side of a narrow place which he and his 
master must pass. This fact being communicated to her 
Majesty's law officer, he drew his revolver and walked up to 
affront the danger. The scoundrels retired precipitately, 
but with many imprecations upon their count r3rman, the 
comprador. But. ah, Chung, and Ching, and Wang, and 
Lin, had you but known how rusty and unserviceable that 
pistol was, you would have come on boldly with your fifteen- 
foot spears ; the bag of dollars would have been yours. 
Why so faint-hearted — 

" Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus 
Taui cari capitis ? " 

That head was worth 500 dollars to you and Yeh. 

The passage-boats to Macao are little armouries. There 
are cannon upon deck and revolvers in every belt. But so 
it was on board the Queen when the cannon was turned 
round and fired into the cabin upon the passengers absorbed 
in tiffin. Further precautions, however, are now taken. In 
the Fei Ma the Chinese passengers are put down into the 
hold, twelve feet deep, and the ladder is taken away. A 
sailor keeps guard over them ^vith a drawn cutlass. One of 
the Yankee ships has an iron cage on deck, into which the 
Chinese passengers are invited to v/alk, and are then locked 
up. The Peninsular and Oriental boat has a better but 
more costly precaution j she carries no Chinese passengers. 



68 CHINA. 

Easy, cosy people at home, who fear nothing but the gout or 
an easterly wind, may laugh, or may even, perhaps, be very 
indignant, at these precautions. But two boats out of five 
have been already taken, and the passengers put to death. 
Death at the hands of those simple sons of civilization is 
not an easy transit. The Bustard gunboat only a few days 
since, on taking a pirate, found two men nailed to planks, 
each with a stink-pot tied round his neck and slow matches 
■burning. By what torments the prisoners taken in the 
'Queen perished we do not know. She was carried up to 
that very Fatshan creek where the battle of the 1st of 
•June took place. Pieces of machinery, marked by fire, 
were seen on a point near the fort ; some revolvers were 
found in one of the junks ; and Captain Corbett obtained a 
Portuguese flag from a mandarin boat which afterwards blew 
up. These circumstances do not absolutely prove, but they 
strongly suggest, that some scene of horrors was enacted in 
this spot, and that the fleet we destroyed were spectators of 
the tortures. Every man in that fleet has been a pirate, 
and there would be no lack of proficients in the art of pro- 
ducing agony. 

While I am upon this subject of piracy, let me mention 
that an American, named Eli Boggs, was tried at Hong- 
kong on Wednesday last for piracy and murder. His 
name would do for a villain of the Blackbeard class, but in 
form and feature he was like the hero of a sentimental 
novel ; as he stood in the dock, bravely battling for his life, 
it seemed impossible that that handsome boy could be the 
pirate v/hose name had been for three years connected with 
the boldest and bloodiest acts of piracy. It was a face of 
feminine beauty. Not a down upon the upper lip; large 
lustrous eyes ; a mouth the smile of which might woo coy 
maiden ; affluent black hair, not carelessly parted ; hands so 
•small and so delicately white that they would create a 
sensation in Belgravia : such was the Hongkong pirate, 
Eli Boggs. He spoke for two hours in his defence, and he 
spoke well — without a tremor, without an appeal for mercy, 
but trying to prove that his prosecution was the result of a 
conspiracy, wherein a Chinese bumboat proprietor* and a 

* There can be no doubt of the guilt of Eli Boggs ; but this bum- 



ELI BOGGS; THE PIRATE. 6^ 

sub-official of the colony (both of whom he charged as being 
in league with all the pirates on the coast) were the chief 
conspirators. The defence was, of course, false. It had 
been proved that he had boarded a junk, and destroyed by 
cannon, pistol, and sword, fifteen men ; and that, having 
forced all the rest overboard, he had fired at one of the 
victims, who had clutched a rope and held on astern. No 
witness, however, could prove that he saw a man die from a 
blow or a shot struck or fired by the pirate. The jury, 
moved by his youth and courage, and straining hard their 
consciences, acquitted him of the murder, but found him 
guilty of piracy. He was sentenced to be transported for life. 

I record this trial, not because this young ruffian is a 
dandy as well as a cut-throat, but because the subject of 
piracy is of great importance while dealing with this 
country, and must form an article of our new treaty^ 
"Where I now write thei^e are 200 junks lying in the har- 
bour before me, and every one of them is armed with at 
least two heavy guns — some have twelve. Probably one 
quarter of these are pirates, who live principally by piracy,, 
and adopt the coasting trade only as a cover to their real 
profession ; at least one other quarter are not proof against 
temptation and a weak victim. It requires great charity 
or credulity to believe that all the junks that compose the- 
other half "are honest traders. The opinion here is that an, 
armed Chinese junk is always a pirate when opportunity 
offers. 

This state of things cannot be tolerated. Every one of 
these vessels must be disarmed, and some arrangement must 
be made whereby the cruisers of the Chinese government 
shall be distinguishable by, and be made to act in concert 
with, the cruisers of the European Powers. Every country 
is bound to protect its coasts. 

But we were on our way to Macao. 

Although approached through four miles of shallow and 
turbid water, Macao looks well from the sea. A semicircle- 
boat proprietor was undoubtedly a Jonathan Wild. His wealth and 
the clannish secrecy of the Chinese enabled him to evade justice for a 
long time ; but he was at length convicted, and is, I believe, now 
working in chains upon the roads of the island. 



70 CHINA. 

of large wliite houses glitters in the simshine. Eight and 
left two hills, crowned with forts and covered with foliage, 
protect either horn of the crescent; v/hile from the dense 
city behind domes and cathedral-towers rise. But it is the 
appearance of a past greatness. If we except the houses 
of the Praja, "JWi^" is written upon every w^all. This 
dwindling, dying city, has recently, however, shown some 
signs of life. There are sixty vessels in the harbour; the 
rice for famishing Canton comes this way. Some of the 
Cantonese merchants have established themselves here, and 
every one of our commercial magnates of Hongkong has a 
bunga,low within the protection of the Portuguese guard. 

Pound a point, about four miles away, lies the Raleigh, 
sunk now to her upper deck. The Nankin has succeeded 
in getting the masts out of her. In her yellow paint and 
her dismasted state, she looks like one of the hulls at Sheer- 
ness. They have offered her for sale, but the sum bid for 
her (5,200 dollars) v/as not worth the risk of keeping a 
shijD of war upon an unsafe station at the typhoon seasou, 
and this precaution would be necessary to protect the pur- 
chaser. The present idea is to blow her up. 

Macao is open to the sea-breeze, v/hich Victoria is not. 
Macao possesses the grave of Camoens, which may be an 
important fact to •some people. But I agree with the 
American poet, who has pencilled upon the tomb,-^ 

*' I can't admire great Camoens with ease, 
Because I can't speak Portuguese." 

Macao also has shady gardens and pleasant w^alks and 
rides, and is the only place where the poor Hongkongian 
can go to change his atmosphere. 

There is a mandarin in the neighbourhood of this place 
who ought to be made to feel that England has a long arm. 
He has organized a system of coercion upon the Chinese of 
Hongkong. He keeps regular returns of their names and 
their gains, and he levies taxes upon them. Once he has 
withdrawn them altogether. He works upon them by 
means of their relations, many of whom reside in his 
district. 

When something of the same sort was done by the man- 



VICTORIA CITY AT SUN-DOWN. 71 

darin at Cowloon, Sir John Bowring sent a boat's crew and 
brought him to Hongkong, where he read him a long 
lecture and sent him back to behave better. This experi- 
ment ought to be repeated. If we cannot protect these 
people, they will not respect us. 

Such, up to the 2nd of this month, were our resources in 
the absence of news from England, and in our ignorance of 
the wreck of the Erin. With these rare exceptions, we sit 
in a half-torpid state upon our verandahs, or, if we have 
none, then on the club verandah, and wait till the sun goes 
down and the notables of the place come forth for their 
half-hour's exercise. The booming of guns gives token 
that General Ashburnham is exchanging civilities with the 
French and American navies. General Garrett appears on 
his Penang pony — strong-nerved old man, who alone, of all 
the new comers, has affronted the first burst of the climate 
without suffering a day's illness, who tells of Peninsular 
sieges and Crimean battles just as an iron column would re- 
cord them; their dates are written in lines upon its front, 
but it is tough and unworn as when first set up. Colonels 
Pakenham and Wetherall are walking together in very good 
preservation, and doubtless think this Chinese affair a very 
small matter after the battles before SebastopoL Colonel 
Lugard is meditating deep things about mysteries which I 
attempt not to fathom ; for Colonel Lugard is the head of 
the Engineers. I wish he would think it necessary for 
some military purpose to drive a tunnel through this "Vic- 
toria mountain and let in the south-west monsoon.* Major 
Macdonald, who so promptly put Balaklava to rights, has 
been at his desk all day, and is stretching right away for a 
rapid walk. There are others whose names are scarcely less 
known to despatches, but quos nunc perscrihere longum est. 
The ladies of the colony are coming forth sparingly, in 
2:)alanquins or in pony- chairs, and some of the residents are 
dashing by in light four-wheeled match carts, as though 
they could not get quick enough over their two miles of 

* A more practicable thing would be to take possession of the 
opposite peninsula of Cowloon. It is quite incomprehensible that this 
has not been done. If any other Powers should do so, — and what is to 
prevent them ? — the harbour of Hongkong is lost to us. 



72 CHINA. 

ground. The portico of tlie club lias its groups of lookers- 
on, and in the hall there is a little crowd surrounding the 
ice-pails — for ices at Hong-Kong must be eaten between six 
and seven o'clock, or not at all. 

Suddenly from the mouth of the harbour comes the sound 
of guns. We have scarcely applied ourselves to count them 
when the Calcutta opens in reply, fires nineteen times in 
measured succession ; then, after a pause, seven more. There 
can be doubt any longer — the great man has arrived. The 
sun is down and the weather is changed, the wind whistles 
and the rain descends ; but most of us wait to catch a 
glimpse of the topmasts of the Shannon as she steams 
steadily into port and comes to anchor alongside of the 
flagship. 

Lord Elgin has arrived in perfect health. Two days were 
given to receptions on board. On the third he landed, under 
salute from all the ships and from the fort, and the troops* 
were turned out, and there was a gala day, and Sir John 
Bowring conducted him through a line of soldiers to 
Government House, where he now remains a guest, and 
where dinner-parties, levees, and addresses are the order of 
the day. 

We have, therefore, a plenipotentiary v/hom all parties 
liope and believe to be the man for the occasion ; and we 
have leaders who, if ordered to do so, would take 10,000 
men through China from the Yellow Sea to the Himalaya, 
but we have not got the 10,000 men. 

It v/as very evident that Lord Elgin's position will not 
allow him to remain idle in Hongkong, and no one was 
surprised w4icn the rumour spread that he was going north- 
ward. The favourite theory is that he is going to Japan, 
and it is not impossible that we may see the coasts of that 
mysterious island. The course really resolved upon, how- 
ever, is this : — A few days after this mail has been de- 
spatched, the Calcutta, the Shannon, the Pearl, the Infiexihle, 
the Hornet, and two gun-boats will proceed northwards, te^ 
rendezvous at Shanghai, and to proceed thence to the mouth 

* That is, the Madras troops. It was afSrmed upon official authority 
that it would have cost the 59th about two lives to turn out a guard of 
Lonour even at sundown. 



LORD Elgin's policy. 7^ 

of the river Pei-lio, on wliich river Pekin stands. Arrived 
at the nearest point to the capital, Lord Elgin will despatch 
to the authorities, for transmission to the emperor, a letter 
requiring the emperor within a specified time either to 
recognize or to repudiate the acts of his officers at Canton. 
If the court of Pekin repudiate Yeh, and pay compensation 
for past injuries, and give security against their recurrence 
— well. If, as is most probable, either no notice be taken 
of the letter, or a disposition be shown to entangle the 
ambassador in questions of ceremonial, Lord Elgin will 
declare war, and thus relieve the relations of the two powers 
from their present anomalous position. Canton will then be 
occupied, the trade of the northern ports will not be un- 
necessarily interfered with, but such further proceedings will 
be taken as may be necessary to bring the court of Pekin 
to reason. 

Such is, I believe, the intended policy. Under other 
circumstances I should question it most hostilely. It is full 
of risks. It seems to give authority to the mischievous 
notion that a ppwer which refuses to be one of the comity 
of nations is entitled to all the courtesies and forms of inter- 
course which civilized nations maintain among themselves. 
It affords an opportunity for the exercise of diplomatic 
cunning, which may compel Lord Elgin either to fail in his 
mission or to adopt a tone of decision which may be readily 
represented as a rudeness. It affords a loophole for escape 
from a position which will not recur. The answer to those 
considerations, however, is this : — We must do something,, 
and we have not force to do what we ought to do. 

Lord Elgin, therefore, will either go direct to Pekin and 
conclude a treaty, or he will come back and occupy Canton. 
In the interest of a durable peace all the Europeans here 
hope that the latter will be the course which events will 
take. 

Many people think that there could be no difficulty in 
carrying on our corrective measures in India and our war 
with China at the same time. There are, doubtless, sepoy 
regiments which, although not openly in revolt, are not 
trustworthy in action against their co-religionists. Why not 
send them to China ? Sepoys have already been upon the 



74 CHINA. 

heights above Canton, ?ind behaved admirably. The sun of 
China, under which our ruddy English recruits f^row feeble, 
as flies in frost, would deal tenderly with the Hindoo. So 
ifc was when Gough took Canton, and Elliott sold his con- 
quest. So it would be again. 

I believe the only objection to this obvious and ready ex- 
pedient is the expense. If you bring Indian troops here, 
you must put all the Queen's troops upon Indian allowances. 

Now, the difference between the pay of an Indian regi- 
ment and a regiment of Queen's troops is something under 
£4,000 a year — not the price of the freight of a cargo of 
useless shoes, or the waste upon an idle transport — not 
one-hundredth part of the cost of the Transit and the 
Urgent. Set against this the fact that the rations of English 
troops here will cost the Government 35. a day, while the 
rice and curry of the Hindoo, even with the addition of the 
ration of mutton or goat's-flesh to the Mohammedan soldiers, 
cannot average above I5., and we should soon find the ap- 
parent saving absorbed. Suppose we had ten regiments in 
the field, and that £40,000 was paid in extra pay — a 
most extravagant suggestion — v/hat is that sum in the 
general expenses of a war ? I confess that I should feel 
some consolation under such an increase by the knovv'- 
ledge that the money would go, not into the pockets of 
meat preservers and hay preservers, shipowners and con- 
tractors, but into the hands of the men who do the work, 
and who are certainly not, at present, overpaid for what 
they do. 

While I am upon this subject let me say a word about 
the withdrawal of the field-allowance. Under existing 
regulations, ofEcers absent from England in localities where 
war is either pending or anticipated are allowed a small 
sum to cover their extra expenses, their pony hire for bag- 
gage, their mess utensils and increased expenses, perhaps 
also the extra cost to which they are put for clothing to 
suit the hot or cold climate in which they may be placed. 
A subaltern gets Is. 6d. a day extra, a captain half a crown. 
This is called field-allowance, and here, at Hongkong, would 
be altogether inadequate to put an officer upon a par with 
his comrade in England. The vdthdrawal of this is a great 



STSATEGICS OF CANTON. 75 

injustice in a little matter. I believe the disallowance is 
illegal, and can only be supported by altering the terms of 
the order. It is, moreover, in breach of Lord Panmure's 
public promise. But, at any rate, it is an unworthy thing 
to do. Unfortunately, there are not a few officers in our 
army who have so narrow a margin between their income 
and their necessities that the loss of this small daily sum is 
a loss of comforts hard to be resigned. 

I promised last mail to send you some description of 
Canton in a strategic point of view. There is now no 
prospect of an immediate attack upon this city, yet it is 
impossible to foresee what may happen before the expedition 
returns south. I send you, therefore, what, by personal 
observation and the examination of many British and 
Chinese, I have been able to obtain on this subject. 

People who have never seen an unadulterated Eastern 
city are apt to entertain very erroneous ideas upon the 
subject. When we are told of a city of a million of inha- 
bitants we begin to think of the Rue Rivoli, or of Regent 
Street, or of the Corso, or of the French buildings and 
Moorish palaces at Algiers, or, at least, of the great squares 
of Alexandria, or the European quarter at Cairo. We must 
put European houses entirely out of the question when we 
think of the pure and uncontaminated city of Canton. 
With the exception of the pagodas, the josshouses, and the 
yamuns, there is not in the whole city an edifice as high as 
the lowest house in Holywell-street. The mass of habita- 
tions are about fifteen feet high, and contain three rooms ; 
they have one entrance, closed by a bamboo screen. Some 
of the shops have a low upper story, and then the house, 
roof and terrace altogether, may rise twenty-five feet from 
the street. Better houses there are, but they are not more 
lofty. They are detached, stand upon their own little plot 
of land, and are surrounded by a twelve-foot wall. Then 
there are the palaces, residences of great officials and rich 
merchants, the " yamuns " of governors, and generals, and 
judges. These are "large airy buildings, situated in gardens 
extensive enough to be called parks — excellent barracks and 
camping-ground for British grenadiers. 

All these edifices are of the most fragile description, built 



76 CHINA. 

of soft brick, wood, or mud ; no hopeful shelter to the most 
desperate courage. They would be traversed by Minie balb 
and pierced by grape ; they would be knocked into ruins by 
half-spent round shot ; they would be burst by shells. . 
Heroes could not hold them against an advancing column 
of English troops ; and as to Chinese, the first bullet that 
whistled down the street would be an intimation of an 
intended line of march which soldier and civilian would 
immediately respect. 

The whole circuit of the walled city is just six miles. It 
is necessary to bear in mind the character of the buildings 
of this place, or we shall find ourselves talking nonsense 
about " involving ourselves in the intricacies of a city of a 
million of people." * Seven Dials would be a strong military 
post ; but Greenwich Fair would not offer great strategic 
opportunities of defence. 

General Gough made his attack with 2,000 fighting men^ 
having left Hongkong protected only by a few native 
Indian troops. We have now in this island, and in these 
waters, about 4,000 sailors, 500 marines, and 800 healthy 
soldiers of the land force. The Sanspareil, which has left 
Singapore, and is now momentarily expected, will bring us 
500 more marines. General Gough's attack took place in 
the hot rainy season — on the 18th of May — and if he had 
entered the city he would not have lost a man by disease. 

On the other hand, the recollections of General Gough's 
difficulties have led to the present war. The Cantonese 
remember that while he was waiting for the black mail he 
was attacked by " patriotic volunteers," who surrounded 
part of his force and put it to great difficulties. They 
remember also that these '•' patriotic volunteers " were not 
swei^t away by barbarian cannon, but were coaxed away by 
the Chinese authorities, who acted under threat of a bom- 
bardment of the city. This capital error in morals and in 
policy ; this egregious mistake of that gallant, eager, wrong- 
headed little man. Admiral Elliott ; this unworthy, money- 
grasping, ransom-taking policy has produced the present 

* The accuracy of this information was afterwards conspicuously 
shown when Commodore Elliott, Captain Key, and Mr. Parkes, hunted' 
the whole city through in chase of Yeh. 



WE COULD TAKE CANTON. 77 

war. Since tliat day tlie Cantonese look upon us as robbers 
and booty-seekers, whom it is right to exterminate when 
they can ; whom they could thrash if they pleased, but 
whom they can always get rid of by tossing to us a heajD of 
silver. So they pointed derisively at us whenever they 
saw us ; they called out after us " Tah '* (beat them) ! and 
" Shat " (behead them) ! they encouraged each other to 
acts of violence, and they wrought that intolerable condition 
of things which makes it necessary for us, by more imposing 
force and by higher conduct, to take an attitude of dignity — 
to show these Cantonese that we are not petty pirates and 
plunderers like themselves, but a mighty necessity for good 
and for evil, which to them is irresistible as natural death. 

AVe must do strong violence now, because we have been 
weak and foolish in time past. But what we do we must 
do thoroughly. A single reverse, and we should have 
either to withdraw from these shores or to overrun half the 
empire. I am not resting a feather's weight upon my own 
judgment when I affirm that with our present force we 
could take this city in six hours. But I cannot resist 
the authority which says that we could not hold it 
as we ought to hold it. Great genius might doubtless 
multiply small means. I have heard it said by men whose 
deeds give them right to talk, that 500 men relieved once 
a fortnight ought to hold the city for six months. Perhaps 
the ships could find occasion for keeping the inhabitants of 
the ninety-six villages at home. It was they who attacked 
General Gough upon the heights, and the terrible threat of 
bombardment is always open. The probabilities are that 
after the first day the city would be as tranquil as this city 
of Victoria. The Chinese shopkeepers here say, " You 
catchee citee ; we open shop half- hour after." But this is 
only a probability. Were it not for the danger of the 
.insurgents being beforehand with us, precipitation would be 
madness. Even with this danger impending, it would not 
do to run the risk of finding ourselves in Canton with 
an inadequate force, daily dwindling from overwork and 
•disease. 



78 CHIXA. 

July 10. 
Lord Elgin's answer to the address lias just been printed, 
and I annex a copy. The address was sent to j^ou by a 
previous mail : — 

" Gentlemen, — I am much gratified by the welcome which yoii are 
pleased to proifer to me on my arrival at Hougkong. 

*' I am aware of the deep interest which you have in the re-establish- 
ment of a solid peace, and of the weight which deservedly attaches to 
your opinion, — not only on the points specifically adverted to in this 
address, but also on the larger question of the readjustment of our 
relations with the Chinese empire. I shall, therefore, at all times listen 
with attention and respect to any representations which you may see 
fit to make to me on these subjects, although the interest of the public 
service forbids that I should discuss the instructions with which our 
sovereign has honoured me, or the course which, in pursuance of those 
instructions, it is my intention to pursue. 

" Without, however, departing from the reserve which a sense of 
duty prescribes to me, I may venture to state that I concur with you 
in the opinion that no settlement of our present difficulties will be 
satisfactory which shall fail to teach the Cantonese a wholesome respect 
for the obligations of their own government in its relations with 
independent powers, and for the laws of hospitality towards strangers 
■who resort to their shores for peaceful purposes of trade. 

" The powerful fleet already assembled on these coasts, which will 
soon be supported by an adequate military force, is a pledge of her 
her Majesty's determination toafibrd protection to her faithful subjects 
in this quarter, and to maintain the rights to which they are by 
treaty entitled. 

" It is essential to the permanence of pacific relations with China, 
and to the security of trade, that the court of Pekin should be apprised 
that an arrogant refusal to treat with other powers on the terms pre- 
scribed by the comity of nations, or the alleged wilfulness of a pro- 
vincial authority, will not henceforth be held to release it from the 
responsibility of faithfully adhering to engagements contracted with 
independent and sovereign states. 

" You refer in language of much force and justice to the difficulties 
which beset the mission on which I am entering. I am not insensible 
to those difficulties. But knowing as I do that the government which 
I serve is pursuing no selfish objects, that we may count on the cordial 
sympathy and active co-operation of other great ."ind generous n?.,tions, 
interested with ourselves in the spread of commerce and the extension' 
of civilization — knowing, moreover, the valour and discipline of the 
forces, both military and naval, which, under able and experienced 
commanders, are prepared, if need be, to support the honour of our 
country's flag — I see no reason to doubt that, by prudence and 
patience, moderation and firmness, they may be overcome. 
' To Messrs. Jardine, Matheson, and Co., 
" Dent and Co., and others. 

*' Hongkong, July 8." 



LOED Elgin's answer to address. 7D 

This answer lias been closely scanned, and those who hold 
that the Chinese will promise anything or sign any treaty 
under pressure, but will be influenced only by seeing that 
we can thrash these terrible Cantonese, do not like the 
words " if need be " in the last paragraph. Others, however, 
and these are the majority, both in number and in weight, 
think that we must not too soon vex the conduct of our 
ambassador with hostile criticism. He has a difficult task 
to perform, his responsibility will be terrible should he fail, 
and he ought to be allowed to play his own game. Even 
the more eager and impatient admit that it was necessary 
that he should go north to see the jDresent ports and hold 
talk with the merchants whose interests he is to represent. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

LOPvD Elgin's depasture for Calcutta. 

Diplomatic Conferences — Hongkong Rumoiirs — Resolution of Lord 
Elgin to proceed to Calcutta — jRefieetions iipon the Policy to be 
pursued towards China — Departure of the Shannon and the Pearl. 

HONGKOXG, July 16. 

On the IStli the French admiral came into harbour. 
On the 14th the opium-steamer Launcefield arrived from 
Calcutta, bringing advices to the 19th of June, communi- 
cating certain intelligence of the spread of the mutiny and 
only an uncertain probability of the fail of Delhi. 

In this little community, where everything is watched, 
where everything is known, and where nothing is secret for 
more than a quarter of an hour, it was immediately noto- 
rious that the plenipo, and the general, and the admiral, 
and the French admiral were in earnest communication. 
Then it transpired that orders had been issued to the ships 
under orders for the north not to take in the extra quantity 
of coals previously ordered. So the expedition to the Pei-ho 
had been abandoned, greatly to the joy of every denizen of 
Hongkong. Shortly after, there were gentlemen in the 



60 CHINA. 

Queen's Road who could repeat the very words used at the 
" Council of War /' how the general said " that he could 
not hold that city without some fabulous amount of men ;" 
how the admiral said " that he would show him the way 
in" and how the French admiral remarked that, " if the 
English would take the place, the French would hold it." 
Of course there were rival versions. Another report stated 
that the general insisted upon storming the city at the 
head of the 59th, and that the stopping of the coaling of the 
ships was evidently to decrease their draught of water and 
let them up to shell the fort. The one ruling ideejixee is — 
iake Canton. Every one who comes here is dominated by 
it in ten minutes. Even Lord Palmerston, if he were 
here, would, after a gallant fight about some of the red tape 
of diplomacy and some thumbing of his little Yankee book 
on the law of nations, give in and cry, " Va pour la cite.'' 
Mr. Cobden would be hurried away in much less time, and 
find himself garrisoning Magazine Hill before he had con- 
sidered how he should explain the transaction to Mr. Caird. 

No wonder, then, that seeing that this taking of Canton 
is to us upon the spot the evident and only solution of the 
difficulty, every movement is received as an intimation that 
the C0U2J is about to be made. 

Nothing, however, is at present further from our leaders' 
thoughts than the taking of Canton. As I intimated in 
my last letter, the subject has been considered, and all 
authorities are agreed that, although the city might be 
-destroyed, it could not be taken and held. So far from the 
French having intimated a different opinion, it is no secret 
that they for the present decline any active co-operation of 
any kind. 

The Chinese, who have a spy in every " boy " who stands 
behind your chair, and in every coolie who pulls your 
punkah, get earlier information than the English. There is 
a Chinaman, a painter and copier of charts, in the Queen's 
E-oad, whose shop is like the shop of Pasquin. " Ey yaw," 
said this authority about four o'clock yesterday, " you no 
catchee that city. What for your number one big mandarin 
run away, ey % " The celestial man of art was right. Lord 
Elgin had resolved to start for Calcutta. An hour after- 



"take canton." 81 

wards, and we had the amiouncemeiit that " the Pearl will 
leave for Calcutta, and take letters for Singapore and 
Europe ;" and the information did not long lag, that Lord 
Elgin was to accompany her in the Shannon. 

Of course the Chinese chuckle, and the merchants are 
dispirited. I am convinced, however, that it was the only 
wise course open to Lord Elgin. 

He will take a force of 1,500 blue-jackets and marines 
to Calcutta. This will compose the minds of the inhabitants 
of the City of Palaces, and the fact of his arrival may have 
a beneficial moral effect, showing that the whole Chinese 
expedition is present and ready to act upon India ; tlie- 
high commissioner accompanying them. 

Moreover, he will know, after a fortnight's stay at Cal- 
cutta, what probability there is of Lord Canning being able 
to restore him his troops, or to replace them by native 
Indian regiments. 

These advantages, however, are contingent and collateral. 
The real consideration I take to be, that it is the only escape 
from a false position. If he had gone to the Peiho, he 
would have met there an insult which he is without force 
to resent. The Erench admiral brings intelligence that 
the Baron de Gros will not be here for two months, so that 
if Lord Elgin had remained here, he would have afforded a 
spectacle to the Chinese, and also to Europe, of a British 
plenipotentiary awaiting the leisurely pleasure of our good 
allies. 

Of course the state of India could not have been foreseen, 
but, making all allowances for this disturbing circumstance, 
the people at home seem to have sadly bungled this matter. 

The self-evident course was, to send out a sufficient force 
to punish Yeh ; to take possession of the city out of which 
he had driven us ; to inflict punishment for his attempts at 
wholesale poisoning and for his proclamations inviting our 
assassination. Then, with Canton in our hands, and with 
the balance in the war of reprisals in our favour. Lord Elgin 
might have come out and presented himself with dignity at 
the Court of Pekin.* He might have said, " Your officer 

* It is scarcely necessary to remark that this course was eventually 
forced upon Lord Elgin by circumstances. 

G 



82 CHINA. 

lias broken tlie treaty, and committed upon your allies the 
most savage outrages. We have punished him on the spot ; 
and we come now to ask you either to disown him and to 
indemnify us for his misconduct, or to acknowledge liim and 
make this a national quarrel." 

Instead of this, we can read Lord Elgin's instructions in 
the paragraph of the Queen's Speech and in the proposed 
expedition to the Peiho as clearly as if they were printed in 
the Gazette. He is to present himself at Pekin while the 
Chinese are in possession of the cause of quarrel, and believe, 
and rightly believe, that they have, upon the whole, the best 
of the contest. He will find at the Peiho the same feeling 
which caused the risings at Singapore and Penang, and at 
Sarawak — a feeling generated by the simple fact that the 
English have been driven out of Canton, and have not been 
able to force their way back ; he will be rudely snubbed, or 
entangled in long and fruitless negotiations. Then comes 
the expensive expedient of a declaration of war. The four 
ports will be closed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer's 
je 10,000,000 will be cruelly clipped, and the Yankees will 
stej) in and carry off the profits of British trade. Precious 
time will have been lost, and our position sacrificed, in order 
that Lord Palmerston may have no breach of etiquette upon 
his conscience. A state of* war with the Emperor of China 
costs us £10,000,000 a year in home revenue and commercial 
profits ; a border war of reprisals costs us nothing but the 
expense of the force employed. Yet we play our last card 
first ; we stop our reprisals and commence our war, in order 
to apply to a barbarous Asiatic ceremonies of Western 
chivalry which he can neither appreciate nor understand. 
Yerily, Sir John Bowring, much abused as he is both here 
and at home, has taken a more common-sense view of 
these matters than the high diplomatists of England and 
France. 

About the end of September, whan the Gulf of Pechelee 
is swept by storms, and the anchorage is insecure, the English 
and French plenipotentiaries will probably renew the post- 
poned expedition to the Peiho. They will act in sweet 
accord — the English to open trade for the vv^hole world, the 
French to open the Poman Catholic religion to the v/orld 



THE '•' TKAXSIT's " ALxiCPJTY IN SINKING. 85 

of China. At the end of October they ^YiIl be precisely 
y\-here we all are in this month of July. 

Lord Elgin embarks to-day at 2 o'clock. I shall go and 
study certain commercial questions at the four ports. %yhile 
they are yet open to Englishmen. 

July 25. 

The Peninsular and Oriental Company have determined 
to despatch the Shanghai to Galle, so that I have an. 
opportunity of adding a postscript to my letter, which went 
by way of Calcutta. 

I must mention that for several days the state of Sir 
John. Bowring caused great uneasiness to his friends. He 
has had a bad attack of fever, but has recovered. He w^as 
at his office again yesterday. 

The achievements of the coral reefs in the Straits of Banca 
ought to reach you much earlier than through me. Five 
vessels of war have been ashore in those straits wdthin the 
last twelve months. The Transit alone, of all the, five made 
the most of the opportunity, and went down. The Himalaya 
bumps, sacrifices a little coal and a little water, and proceeds 
on her way rejoicing. The Actceon strikes, knocks away 
her false keel, and sails away all the better for it. The 
Transit takes the matter au serieux, and goes with all 
alacrity to the bottom. Since no lives have been lost, no 
one can regret the accident, except those unhappy staff 
officers who had all their baggage on board. Government 
pays, but you cannot compensate a man for all he loses on 
such occasions. 

You will be told, of course, that at any rate this was no 
fault of the ship. Do your friends at the Admiralty believe 
in "luck," and witchcraft, and judicial astrology, and spirit- 
rappings 1 If so, the sane portion of the nation ought to 
be acquainted with their state of mind. Sane men who are 
not in the Admiralty judge a ship by her performances. 
It may be, and oftentimes is, a ship's own fault even that 
she runs upon a rock, and her fault that she cannot be got 
off again. It must be her fault if she constantly succumbs to 
accidents which other ships survive. An invalid dies of a blo-B' 
which would not affect a strong man ; or a cripple is crushed 
by a descending force w^hich an active man would avoid. 

G 2 



84 CHINA. 

People liere say that the summer is more than usually 
unhealthy. There is a plague of boils upon eveiy one. 
Generals cannot sit clown, and ladies cannot show their 
faces. 

The Inflexible paddle-wheel steamer is gone down to the 
Straits to bring off some of the troops. The Nimrod has 
arrived. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A VOYAGE TO THE NORTH. 

lieaving Hongkong Harbour — Scenery of the China Seas — Swachow — 
Namoa — Amoy. 

On the Yellow Sea Steamer Remi, July 31. 
Good-bye to Hongkong. On Saturday, the 25th of 
July, under a vertical sun and over an nnruffled sea, the 
Hemi steamed out of Hongkong harbour. The ships of 
war, with their awnings spread and their flags drooping 
down the spars, seem to feel the lassitude which oppresses 
all animal life. The junks are spreading their damaged silks 
to dry, covering their rigging with reds and yellows, which 
mingle so badly in detail, but contrast so gorgeously in 
masses. They are also chin-chin-ing their josses for pros- 
jDerous passages, firing off crackers, and sending lighted 
paper lanterns afloat upon the harbour. We take leave 
of the familiar sjDots and prominent points in the city of 
Victoria, and as it recedes from view we wonder how so 
small a speck upon so small an island can hold 70.000 
people. 

We have escaped from that dominating and oppressing 
mountain, and that humid heat. Hey for the north ! Hong- 
kong itself is only one of that multitude of ten thousand 
islands which fringe the Chinese coast from the Gulf of 
Tonquin to the Gulf of Pechelee, and as we move out 
through that strait which separates it from the mainland 
and forms its admirable harbour, we only involve ourselves 
among other barren islands and in other intricate channels. 



SWACHOW. 85 

The south-west monsoon, however, blows gently aft, and 
it is pleasant upon the quarter-deck of the Remi. A 
merchant, with whom I have much confederated, is come 
on board^ accompanied by boxes of ice and cases of creature- 
comforts ; and there is an American captain, who is cunning- 
in strange beverages. There is not much to see, but life is 
not unendurable. 

Next morning we are closely hugging the mainland, and 
can distinguish populous towns upon the coast. How rife 
is human life in this region ! "Wherever the eye wanders, 
thousands upon thousands of fishing-boats cover the sea in 
troops innumerable. These are the minnows of these 
waters. Now and then, with ample snowy canvass, a 
British-built schooner speeds by, sailing like a yacht for a 
regatta cup, but armed to the teeth. That is one of the 
far-famed opium clippers, and she calls Jarcline, or Dent, or 
Kussell, or Heard, her owner. She is the trout of the vv^ater.. 
There are plenty of pike, but they are lurking out of view. 
If that schooner were to be becalmed, or our machinery 
were to break down, they would soon show themselves. 

In the afternoon of our second day's voyage we were off 
Swachow. 

Three low pyramidal hills, behind which lie many square- 
rigged vessels, their spars visible above the elbows of the 
hills, form a breakwater to a convenient bay, and at the top 
of that bay lies a city where a large foreign commerce has 
sprung up despite the opposition of the authorities. The 
surrounding country and the opposite coast of Formosa 
produce large quantities of sugar, and the dangers of piracy 
have enabled the Europeans to monopolize the carrying 
trade, which was formerh^ performed by the junks. The 
junks bring some of the coarse sugars over from Formosa, 
but when purified it is too valuable a cargo to be trusted to 
native bottoms. 

Swachow will be a considerable commercial port when 
a new treaty has placed China within the comity of 
nations. 

Next we pass the island of Namoa — very classic land. 
Namoa is a collegiate city ; literary men abound there, and 
much opium is smoked. One-twentieth part of the whole 



€6 CHINA. 

quantity imported into China is delivered from the Namoa 
station. 

But, notwithstanding the depressing influences of Chinese 
literature and British opium, ISTamoa is a well-cultivated 
island. Barley is growing all up the hills Avhercver the 
rocks allow, and rice is cultivated at the bottom, where the 
collected drainage affords a constant moisture. 

The morning of our third day shows us Chapel Island — 
a rock with a natural tunnel through it. It is the outlying 
picket to the Amoy Archipelago. 

Amoy is one of our lawful ports of trade, and thither we 
are bound. It took, last year, about £120,000 worth 
(471,689 dollars) of our cottons, and £3,000 (11,430 dollars) 
w^orth of our woollens ; and it gave us in return sugar and 
sugar-candy, some indifferent tea, and a little camphor and 
alum. It is not a very large affair, this Amoy trade j but, 
as it is an established fact, we must look at the place. 

As Vv-e stand in from Chapel Island, we appear to be 
entering a deep bay in the mainland. The land we have 
before us is, however, really the two islands of Koolongsu 
and Amoy, so close together that the strait between them 
seems only the upper end of a bay. There are three 
mandarin junks flaunting their gaudy banners, and one of 
them is firing a shot to bring to a boat. But these brave- 
looking war-craft are said to have a marvellously good under- 
standing with the pirates outside, and to be well out of 
the way whenever any enterprise is going on which is under- 
taken in force. Besides the mandarin's there are numerous 
junks of commerce, many lorchas — hybrid things, half Euro- 
pean, half Chinese, — and several European vessels. The 
Comics should show her pennant here, but she is away upon 
a cruise, and the defence of Amoy is left to our picturesque 
and gaudy mandarin friends, with their lofty sterns and 
their carved prows. 

As we advance into the harbour between the two islands, 
■we pass over the spot where the English fleet, in the first 
war, blew out of the vrater the only Chinese fleet that 
ever ventured to come out to m.eet them. To our left, on 
the island of Koolongsu, is the walled graveyard where 
j3Q0ulder the bones of the Englishmen who taught the 



AMOY. 87 

Chinese of these parts a lesson they still remember. Further 
lip upon our right lies the city of Amoy. There are four 
houses which are evidently built for purposes of European 
residence. The rest of the place, in its water-side point of 
view, looks like a small slice of Wapping in very bad repair, 
and grotesquely painted. I found a lady in Amoy who 
resented my asking her if she were resigned to her residence 
there, and who declared that of all spots out of England, it 
was that she should choose to live in. Women find their 
happiness in their duties, and they bear these with them to 
every climate. But Amoy is not a place to be loved for 
itself. With' a chair and four bearers I traversed the town 
in every direction. Amoy is a real unsophisticated Chinese 
town, and I expected something entirely new in character. 
Alas ! there is nothing new, even under the sun of China. 
Amoy is almost exactly like every other tenth-rate Eastern 
town. It has the smell of Lower Thames- street in hot 
noon-day. It has the booth-shaped, one-storied houses 
w^hereof the Arabs have built Constantino, whereof the 
Turks have built the baser parts of Smyrna, and which are 
to be found also in the Egyptian part of Alexandria. It is 
a congeries of huts with open fronts. Upon the floor is 
heaped and exposed for sale every indescribable edible in the 
Chinese dietary. Some, hissing hot, are for immediate con- 
sumption j lumps of roast pork, stews curiously compounded 
of gelatinous matter, a small square piece of meat, and 
vegetables of different kinds, cut into long regular strijjs. 
Some coldly taint the air, and call for iire and quick con- 
sumption, such as fresh fish, caught perhaps in the bay a few 
hours before, but now rapidly decomposing. Livid joints of 
beef hang upon bamboo poles, despite the precepts of Eo ; 
and within reach of their odour is a mountain of Chinese 
confectionery — bean cakes, looking like cakes of honey soap ; 
dark treacly substances, which quiver as they are divided 
into small portions j and a light compound which looks like 
that pleasant mixture of honey and almonds wherein the 
Turks are so cunning. There were shops also full of bamboo 
work, and others where John Chinaman, naked to his hips, 
was at work upon rude furniture j but I saw nothing which 



S8 CHINA. 

ministered to the elegances of life, except a warehouseful 
of artificial flowers. 

I had abundant leisure to observe Amoy in all its details. 
The streets were so narrow that my palanquin, not two feet 
Avide, could not jjass between the merchandise on either side. 
The proprietor stood by to i:)rotect it as we scraped past. 
About six times in the course of our long peregrinations we 
came upon processions from the opposite quarter. Some 
great or little mandarin, with a body-guard armed with 
trident spears, appeared in his palanquin directly in my 
front, and stared at me with a mild interest. In Amoy 
every European face is known, and they are not difficult to 
count. To pass was physically impossible, and there was 
always much shouting ; but I could not detect any tendency 
to be uncivil to the stranger. Once, by the aid of some 
bystanders, and favoured by the construction of the shops on 
either side, I was lifted bodily over the head of the man- 
darin ; sometimes we managed to squeeze by, and sometimes 
we remained in position until a way could be cleared 
through the merchandise. Then *' Ya-ho, ya-ho," sang the 
bearers, and away they went, knocking everything about 
that did not get out of their way. "We passed a few joss- 
houses, which are in form quite alike, and are exceedingly 
well represented in the temple depictured upon a willow- 
pattern plate ; but beyond these I saw no public building. 

The city of Amoy is about a mile and a half in diameter, 
and the residence of Mr. Morrison, the consul, is just out- 
side the city-wall, on the opposite side from the harbour. 
The city-wall is a structure which would not defend 
an orchard from the incursions of an English schoolboy. 
The consular residence is the most pleasant residence in 
this part of the world — large, airy, and convenient, and with 
a spacious verandah, through which the sea-breeze blows 
with grateful freshness. There are gardens all round it, and 
a mound whence there is a prospect of the surrounding- 
country. From the top of the mound I had an oj)portunity 
of seeing a marching column of the Amoy militia, who were 
defiling along the bank of a small lake. 

The uniform of the Amoy militia is not strictly main- 



AMOY. 8^ 

tained, and their order of marcli is not one of severe pre- 
cision. Some of tliem wore the huge bamboo hats which an 
English fruitstall-keeper would use to hold bushels of apples 
and to display hundreds of oranges, but which the Chinese 
IDeasants wear as shields from the sun and rain. Others 
abandoned their shorn heads and pendent tails to the fierce- 
ness of the mid-day heat. They all wore a sleeveless cotton 
jacket with some Chinese characters printed upon it ; but 
in other respects they presented every variety of the coolie 
garb — naked feet and legs, leathern sandals, thick-soled 
Chinese shoes, loose trousers, and cotton breeches, and stock- 
ings, were all equally tolerated among the Amoy militia. 
They straggled along without much order. Two or three 
braves mth trident spears walked first, then followed the 
arquebuse-men, carrying their guns as the spies from the 
land of Canaan brought back their trophies, two men to 
each arquebuse. Then came some warriors with large 
wicker shields and short swords, and, lastly, upon a pony, 
came the venerable leader of the troop, two men holding a 
large parachute-formed parasol over his head. 

Returning from the consulate I visited the merchants' 
"go-downs," and saw the preparation of the teas for the 
English and colonial markets. The outer bamboo casino's 
were being stripped off, and coolies with tow and cungee 
(rice paste) were affixing upon the coarsest possible teas 
printed labels descriptive of very superior quality. I was told 
that these teas were too bad to hope to find any market in 
England, but they would be bought up for the Western 
States of America, for Canada, and for our other colonies. 
The prices are very high. The buyers have in some instances 
been paying more for teas in China than, according to the 
last accounts, they would sell for in England. 

One day is abundance for Amoy. Having obtained all 
the statistics I wanted from the consul, and having noted all 
the information I could obtain from the merchants, I was 
glad to get on board the liemi again, and to find myself 
steaming out of harbour before sundown. Yet even at 
Amoy commerce is winning its v/ay, and the operations are 
increasing. 

In the afternoon of the next day we sighted the " White 



90 CHINA. 

Dogs " — rocky islets at the mouth of the Min. Here we 
were to leave the mail for Foochow, another of our treaty 
ports, situate forty miles up that dangerous river. I wanted 
to go to Foochow, and there were several mercantile people 
on board who were very anxious to know the price of teas 
there ; but they only smiled when I proposed to go up in the 
mail-boat. "When I argued that where her Majesty's mails 
could be trusted, our carcasses and packa-ges could not be in 
much danger, they replied that the river pirates knew that 
her Majesty's mails consisted of "chits" not worth one 
dollar to a pirate, but that xxO instance had yet occurred of 
a chest of opium or a box of treasure being trusted to this 
conveyance. I had calculated on meeting a stout sailing- 
boat, manned by an English crew. I own I was a little 
astonished to find at the appointed place a miserable Chinese 
sanpan, manned by an old Chinaman and his two sons. 
Three nights in such a vessel as this was not an encouraging 
prospect ; and when I was told that I might possibly be 
detained a month before I should find an opportunity of 
going thence north to Shanghai, I felt that a port having 
such sparse facilities of access, could not ofier very valuable 
opportunities for investigation. 

Foochow is of importance to us as a tea-port. In 1856 
40,972,6001b. were exported, valued at £1,525,000. Of 
these 23,880,8001b. came to Great Britain, and in return 
Foochow took 110,000 pieces of our gray and white long- 
cloths, and 1,000 pieces of long ells, valued together at 
£70,250. The rest was paid in bullion. 

The balance of trade, therefore, is at this port altogether 
against us, and I am told upon the authority of a man who 
knows the country well, that, as a tea-port, Foochow is 
altogether a mistake. Higher up upon the coast, just upon 
the division-line which separates the provinces of Fuhkien 
and Chiekiang, lie the bay and city of Fuhning. I am told 
that the tea which is brought down to Foochow is all 
carried upon men's backs across the high chain of mountains, 
and comes from the neighbourhood of Fuhning, which is the 
centre of this tea-district. I am told also that when teas 
were selling at Foochow at twenty-six taels a picul, they 
might be bought at Fuhning at eighteen taels per picul j and 



WANCHOW. 91 

tliat the interruptions which have occurred to getting the 
teas down to Foochow this year, are occasioned by the 
difficulties of the mountain transit, and would not operate 
if we went to Fuhning and embarked them there. When 
a new treaty shall have given us freedom to trade along tlie 
whole of the coast, Foochow will probably go out of exist- 
ence as a commercial port. As it is, we have been several 
times on the point of abandoning it. 

jSText day we pass Wan chow upon the coast. We are 
now coasting along one of the most densely-peopled pro- 
vinces of China, and the seaboard is studded with great 
cities. Wanchow carries on a tolerated trade v/ith us, and 
we get tea, silk, and alum from that port. It is the nearest 
point of communication with the black-tea districts, and it 
■svill take a great start when the country is open. * 

This treacherous Chinese sea is still blue, and calm, and 
beautiful, although it is the full season of typhoons, and we 
have been coursing the length of the channel of Formosa, 
Avhich is thought to be the birthplace of all typhoons. 
During our fifth night at sea we fell in with a dismasted 
ship, which refused our proffered assistance, and disappointed 
our captain's hope of salvage, but which reminded us pas- 
sengers that these skies do not always smile. Not long 
after, in the clear moonlight, three large heavily-armed 
junks came swooping round us — no doubt they will also 
visit our dismasted friend ; but he has made himself pretty 
taut by this time, and will not be an easy prey. 

On the sixth day of our voyage we stand out to sea, and 
keep outside the Chusan group. The sacred isle of Puto is 
just visible through my glass, and I can see no small object 
in Chusan. To-morrow morning we shall arrive early at 
Woosung, and proceed up the river to Shanghai, and, as I 
shall only arrive just in time to catch the home-going mail, 
I ^Yi[\ now close this letter. 



92 



CHAPTER X. 

THE NOETH. 

The Moutli of the Yang-tse-Kiang — The Emily Jane Opium Ship — - 
Approach to Shanghai — Shangai Statistics — Environs — The Baby 
Tower — Infanticide — Progress of the Kebellion. 

Shanghai, August 7. 

My last despatch was closed in hot haste, for the Formosa 
hove in sight, and in five minutes the boat was lowered, the 
letters were put on board, and we followed them with 
wistful eyes as they departed for " home." 

Next morning we were still out of sight of laud, but the 
leadman's cry told that we were steaming in shallow waters. 
The morning's bath showed that the water was quite fresh, 
and opaque with rich alluvial soil. There were no other 
symptoms of land. We were in the mouth of the mighty 
river Yang-tse — "the Child of the Ocean" — the richest 
river in the world ; richest in navigable water, in mighty 
cities, in industrious human beings, in affluent tributaries, 
and in wide margins of cultivated lands of exhaustless fer- 
tility. This vast expanse of turbid fresh water is saturated 
with the loam of fields 1,500 miles away. Portion of this 
rippling element was gathered upon those great mountain- 
ranges of Central Asia where the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, 
and the two great rivers that irrigate Siam and Cochin 
China, and the fierce " Yellow Piver " which pervades the 
north of China, divide the drainage. The volume was in- 
creased by every mountain and every descending streamlet 
through 600,000 square miles of midland China. In its 
pride and in its strength, the proud river fights for a little 
while with Ocean himself for empire, drives back his salt 
v/aves, and establishes a fresh- water province in the midst of 
his dominions. The Chinese love and venerate the Yang-tse 



THE YANG-TSE. 93 

as Chinese sons love and venerate their fathers. Philo- 
sophers draw their parables from his greatness and 
beneficence, historians chronicle his droughts and floods as 
events more important than the change of dynasties j and 
poets find his praises the most popular theme for their 
highest flight of song. 

Many a gentle dullard will think or say that I am 
" straining after the picturesque," or, more horrible still, 
" writing sentiment." Don't believe it. I write rapidly 
v.diat I feel earnestly. The Yang-tse-Kiang is the onot 
de Venigme, the secret of the great Chinese puzzle. If I 
cannot make Mr. Doldrums, or Sir John Fathead, or 
General Crass understand the grandeur and the all-im- 
portance of this river, I shall never succeed in fixing in his 
skull one right idea about China. If he will study the 
geography of this empire as I have done, hour by hour, and 
day by day, with map-glass, and books of travel, collating 
the bad maps, and asking explanations from Trench mission- 
aries and Chinese merchants, he may then say what he likes 
about my descriptions, for he cannot but share my con- 
clusions. 

We had steamed for some hours in this shallow sea, when 
a line, having length but neither breadth nor thickness, 
became just visible far away upon our left. As our course 
was tangential to this line, it gradually became more distinct. 
Then through our glasses we could see a level coast, well 
timbered with trees,— no palms or Eastern forms of foliage, 
but such an outline as we might trace on the banks of Essex 
or Lincolnshire. 

Between the river-shore and the woodlands there was a 
margin of meadow-land, where droves of cattle and flocks 
of sheep were depasturing, and everything around, except 
only the fierce sunshine, gave promise that we had escaped 
into an European climate. 

Then land upon the right grew into view, not the opposite 
bank of the Yang-tse — that is far out of sight, — but an 
island which he is throwing up. From day to day he piles 
there the spoils he brings down from the midland provinces. 
The pilots say they can observe an increase every week. 
The Chinese are already planting bamboo there, to give 



94: CHINA. 

solidity to the ricli alluvial soil. A thousand squatters are 
ready to seize upon it and convert it into gardens imme- 
diately the tide shall cease to cover it. 

Eishing, and carrying, and convoying, a thousand junks 
and lorchas are scudding to and fro in the estuary. But we 
proceed not far up tlie channel of " the Child of the Ocean ,^' 
« the Father of Kivers," " the Girdle of China." A checker- 
painted sea-mark (which wants only a telegraph upon it to 
make its usefulness complete) and a floating lighthouse mark 
the point where the last tributary to the Yang-tse-Kiang, 
the river Wang Poo, joins its waters. Upon a low spit of 
land stands the desolate and amphibious-looking village of 
Woosung. The place is not really desolate and is not really 
amphibious, for large fortunes are constantly being made 
here (the golden sands of commerce accumulate as rapidly as 
the deposits of the Yang-tse-Kiang), and the piles on which 
the buildings are erected lift them up out of danger of 
inundation. But the Chinese have a talent for giving an 
appearance of squalor to their towns and villages. 

I did not land, but proceeded immediately in a sanpan to 
Messrs. Dent's receiving-ship, which lies strongly anchored 
fore-and-aft in the mouth of the river. Time was when the 
Emily Jane was a floating garrison, with a disciplined crew 
trained to gunnery and boarding practice. Her guns are 
still in very good order, but she is not likely to test their 
powers; for the mandarin junks are no longer her enemies, 
and the pirates hold her in great respect. I am afraid she 
is a very wicked Emily Jane, for she is crammed wdtli 
opium, and the odour of the drug is strong in her spacious 
cabins. Your " Special Correspondent" ought to be above 
such base considerations, but Temperance advocates have 
been kno^vn to relish a rump-steak cooked upon the furnace- 
fire of Broadwood's brewery ; and I must own that when the 
frank and hospitable commander of the Emily Jane had 
responded to my letter of introduction by an invitation to 
join him in some well-cooled sauterne, a joint of capital 
Shanghai mutton, and a successfully concocted ice pudding — 
grateful contrast to the monotonous fare of a passenger 
steamboat — I did not look about me with so much flaming 
indignation as a total - abstinence - from - opium advocate 



APPEOACH TO SHANGHAI. 9'5 

ought to have done. These cool drinks calm one's judg- 
ment. 

I shall return to this opium question hereafter — I hope in 
more serious and ratiocinative mood. After " tiffin" I left 
the Emily Jane, for the tide was making, and Shanghai is 
seven miles up this river Wang Poo. 

At a distance of three miles, in the gray twilight, Shanghai 
looks like a distant view of Woolwich. The tall spars of 
the Pique frigate, the English and American steamers of 
war, and a fleet of merchant vessels give an air of life and 
bustle to the waters of this noble tributary to the Yang- 
tse-Kiang. Higher up, where a turn in the river gives an 
inland appearance, we see a multitudinous mass of junk- 
masts, just as from Greenwich and Woolwich we see the 
spars of the ships that crowd our docks. Ail tells of a large 
commerce requiring a strong protection. In this indistinct 
light the " hongs" of the European settlement loom like 
the ship slips at Deptford or Woolwich. It is only upon a 
near approach that they resolve themselves into fine, finished 
buildings, some columned like Grecian temples, some square 
and massive like Italian palaces, but all declaratory that the 
Q^es angusta domi is a woe unknown to Englishmen in China. 

The English settlement at Shanghai is situate upon a bend 
of this river Wang Poo. Its boundaries are its fortifications. 
On one side the Soo-choo river, which comes down from the 
great city Soo-choo (the Birmingham of China) and falls into 
the Wang Poo, forms its limits. On the other side, the 
Yang-kang-pang canal shuts it from the settlement allotted 
to the French. This French allotment extends up to the 
walls of the Chinese city of Shanghai. 

The frontage upon the Wang Poo, between the Soo-choo 
river and the canal, is nearly a mile in length, and the settle- 
ment extends backwards about half a mile. This space is 
divided into squares by six roads at right angles with the 
river, and three parallel to it, and in these squares are the 
residences and go-downs of the commercial houses, each in 
its surrounding plot of ornamented ground. In the rear of 
all is the Shanghai racecourse. 

I am so fortunate as to be commended to the princely 
hospitality of Mr. Beale, whose capacity of entertainment is 



96 CHINA. 

SO large that he can allot a separate establisliment to each 
guest. I occupy the rooms where Mr. Fortune stored his 
treasures and where he hung up that terrible double-barrelled 
-gun which raked the decks of so many pirate junks. 

If I have succeeded in conveying to the reader any notion 
of this place, he will recognize in it the present mainstay and 
the future hope of our trade with China. Almost yesterday 
the site of this handsome Anglo-Chinese city was paddy- 
fields and cotton grounds. In 1856, 309 British ships, of the 
tonnage 92,943 tons, unloaded on the quays. Imports from 
the whole world to the amount of £3,010,51 1 passed through 
the custom-house, and, in addition to these, opium to the 
value of £4,624,305 passed through this portal to the interior 
of China. Yet, notwithstanding this amount of legal and 
illegal imports, a further importation, £4,287,990 in hard 
bullion, was requisite to settle the balance of trade with 
Europe and America, and to pay for the enormous amount 
of tea and silk which China sent down to Shanghai, and 
Shanghai distributed to Europe, America, and Australia. 

This is something like prosperity — a single port with an 
annual balance of four millions and a quarter in its favour, 
but for the opium, the amount would have been nine millions. 
In the current year, according to all present appearances, 
the sum may reach £9,000,000, even with the set-off of the 
ojDium ; and but for this undesirable resource for hedging 
our losses, the civilized world would have to find £14,000,000 
worth of silver to pay the Chinamen who supply this single 
port. 

It is impossible to predict this as a certainty. Perhaps 
the native Chinese merchants may overstand their market, 
and the exports may be checked. All we know at present 
is, that the Chinese have a tremendous silk-crop, and are 
holding out for most extortionate prices ; and that, although 
some houses hold their hands, there are others who think it 
can all be sent to Europe at a profit at the prices demanded, 
and are bujdng freely. In any other country this problem 
would meet a certain solution, but in China even this great 
export trade is as nothing. There is a competing home 
market of 360,000,000 of people, and almost every labourer 
-in the cities has his holiday silk tunic. 



COMMERCIAL IMPOHTANCE OF SHANGHAI. 97 

True, it is small merit in an Englishman's eyes that this 
port of Shanghai is so productive to China that it drains us 
of our bullion, deranges our exchanges, and embarrasses our 
commerce. But it is a fact, and a very important fact. I 
am not now going to investigate why this so happens. I 
am not in a condition to speak authoritatively yet of the 
doings at the Pihsin, the Taeping, and the Kan custom- 
houses, or to tell the mysteries of that cordon of douanes 
which is drawn round this port, and prevents our goods 
from penetrating, with fair chance of competition, sixty 
miles into the interior. When I have succeeded, or failed, 
in getting near these places, and have got all the information 
I can gather, I shall devote some very lengthy epistles to 
the great question of how to work oiu- manufactures into 
China. At present I have no further purpose than to show 
w^hat a commercially important place this port of Shanghai 
is — to fix it in the public mind, so that in our dealings with 
the court of Pekin it may hold its proper rank. 

Be3''ond the limits of the European settlement the rich 
alluvial plain on which Shanghai stands extends for twenty 
miles without a hillock. We must admire the fertility of 
the soil and the industry of the people, but there all our 
gratification must end. The roads are devious footpaths, 
and the courses of traffic are dikes and drains falling rapidly 
to ruin. When the fierceness of the sun is a little mode- 
rated, I walk about these fenny tracks as they wind more 
tortuously than the footways in the marshes between Erith 
and Greenhithe. They all tell of better days. They are 
strongly paved with rough blocks of granite or of limestone, 
fortunately too solid to need repair. Small drains are crossed 
upon slabs of stone of many tons weight, and wider water- 
courses are crossed by bridges of stone built to last centuries. 
But where present or constant care is required we see the 
evidences of a decrepit government and an unsettled society. 
Heeds and bamboos choke the watercourses ; some have 
become dry, which were navigable five years ago. Here wo 
come upon the site of the Imperialist camp. The canal 
which formed its defence in front is now a swamp. The 
peasant still retains his habits of industry. The land is 

H 



58 CHINA. 

parcelled out into little patches of cotton ; and as the plant- 
must be sown wide, the interstices are filled with bea^ns, or 
by some vegetable that will iind a market in Shanghai. 
The senses are afflicted by open pans of human ordure, care- 
fully preserved for manure ; and the propi'ietor, with a small 
bucket fixed at the end of a bamboo, is bringing water from 
the ruined canal to irrigate his little cotton-garden. In all 
probability the government has made the usual grant for 
sustaining that canal, for routine is constant in China as in 
England ; but the mandarin has embezzled three-fourths of 
the sum, and the contractor has expended one-half of the 
rest in bribes, and has pocketed the remainder. Cotton 
(yellow and white) is the general crop ; but it is not 
all cotton. There are patches of maize and leguminous 
plants of many kinds, but the staple of this district is 
cotton. At present the plant is a low woody plant 
about a foot high, a little like (with the exception of the 
stools) those young springs of an oak coppice which form 
such pleasant cover to shoot pheasants in early in October. 
In another month the flowers will be out, and a fortnight 
later the yellow pods of which the nankeen cloth is made 
will form and burst, and all the population will turn out to 
pluck them. The old women will sit under the eaves of 
their cottages cleaning and winding-, which, indeed, is their 
normal occupation all the year through ; the able-bodied part 
of the family, having cleared their leguminous crop, will 
plough up the ground, and either prepare it for wheat, or, if 
the situation is favourable, will bank up the land and let in 
the water to prepare for rice. The wheat is off the ground 
in May or June, and the cotton is again sown. 

Thus three crops annually are obtained from this alluvial 
plain. 

O Vice-Consul Harvey — clode sermones utriusque linguae, 
— ^to whom the manners and the language of China are even 
as the manners and the langua,ge of Paris or of London, tell 
me what means that more than usually pestilential stench. 
It seems to radiate from that decaying pepperbox-shaped 
tower, which, although not twenty feet high, we must by 
the courtesy of China call a pagoda. 



THE BABY-TOWER. 99 

Undismayed, the energetic vice-consul, who sometimes 
acts as guide, philosopher, and friend, and expatiates with 
me over this maze, advances through a vapour so thick that 
I wonder the Chinese do not cut it into blocks and use it 
for manure ; and at a distance of five yards from the build- 
ing puffed hard at his cheroot, and said, — 

" That is the Baby-tower." 

" The 1 " said I, inquiringly. 

'• The Baby-tower. Look through that rent in the stone- 
work — not too close, or the stream of effluvia may kill you. 
You see a mound of whisps of bamboo straw. It seems to 
move, but it is only the crawling of the worms. Sometimes 
a tiny leg or arm, or a little fleshless bone, protrudes from 
the straw. The tower is not so full now as I have seen it ; 
they must have cleared it out recently." 

" Is this a cemetery or a slaughterhouse ?" 

" The Chinese say it is only a tomb. Coffins are dear, 
and the peasantry are poor. "When a child dies, the parents 
wrap it round with bamboo, throw it in at that window, and 
all is done. AVhen the tower is full, the proper authorities 
burn the heap, and spread the ashes over the land." 

There is no inquiry, no check. The parent has power to 
kill or to save. Nature speaks in the heart of a Chinese 
mother as in the breast of an English matron. But want 
and shame sometimes shout louder still. There is a foundlinsr 

o 

hospital in the Chinese city with a cradle outside the door, 
and a hollow bamboo above it. Strike a blow upon the 
bamboo, and the cradle is drawn inside. If it contain an 
infant, it is taken and cared for, and no questions asked. 
There is also a system of domestic slavery in China. At an 
early age a child is worth dollars; a father or mother may 
for money delegate their own absolute power — delegate 
without losing it — for, although the father may have sold 
his son to a stranger, or although a mother may have sold 
her daughter to prostitution — and concubines in China are 
only thus to be obtained — the duty from child to parent 
remains unimpaired, and is strictly performed. 

The incentives thus offered by Mammon and the alter- 
native proffered by native charity may save lives that would 
otherwise be destroyed j but tliis Baby-tower is a terrible 

H 2 



100 CHINA. 

institution. It stands there, close to the walls of a crowded 
city,' an intrusive invitation to infanticide.'" 

I have paid one hurried visit to the Chinese city, but 
must postpone any description of it until I have opportunity 
to see it thoroughly, and this will not be for some weeks. 
Ever since my arrival here I have been trying to organize 
an expedition into the interior, but every one is afraid of 
fever and ague and sunstrokes, and talks of two months 
hence, when I hope to be thinking of coming home. At 
last I have found a companion in an ardent missionary who 
speaks the language well. I have purchased a modest 
Chinese wardrobe, and a barber is deliberating upon the 
iabrication of a toupee, with a handsome tail attached. With 
the aid of Chinese spectacles, which are always four inches 
in diameter, I flatter myself I am so disguised that my own 

* It has become rather a fashion with modern writers on China to 
deny that the Chinese are addicted to infanticide. I am sorry that my 
experience does not corroborate this view. I have seen proclamations 
which deplore the frequency of the exposure of female infants, and 
attempt to reason with the parents by asking, If so many female 
children are destroyed, where will the next generation obtain wives ? 
At Ningpo I saw in the household of Mrs. McGowan, the lady of 
Dr. McGowan, the American medical missionary, a young girl with 
large feet and a cheerful aspect, doing duty as a nursery maid. This 
girl had been rescued from death by starvation. Seeking more in- 
formation upon the subject, Mrs. McGowan told me that although the 
authorities at Ningpo were ashamed of the fact, and had the grace to 
think it an imputation upon a literary city, it was by no means an 
uncommon circumstance to find under the walls bodies of infants halt 
devoured by dogs. A very shocking incident of this kind had occurred 
a few weeks before. One night the little girl whom I have already 
Bientioned, came up to Mrs. McGowan and told her that she heard the 
growling of dogs and the faint cry of a child just outside the garden- 
gate. The benevolent lady immediately arose, and going forth with a 
lantern and some of the house coolies, was quickly guided to the spot. 
It was a dreadful spectacle. An infant, wrapped in a coarse cloth, was 
surrounded by a pack of pariah dogs, who were tearing at the cloth 
and already gnawing the flesh. The baby was still alive. While the 
men beat off the dogs, Mrs. McGowan took the little creature in her 
arms and ran with it to the house. It was too late. The squalid 
tiny thing opened its eyes and seemed to try to cling to her, and, as she 
imagined, smiled upon her, and died. I Avas so struck by this anecdote, 
thai I asked and obtained permission of Mrs. McGowan to repeat it 
with the authentication of her name. 



PROGRESS OP THE REBELLION. 101 

housekeeper; with her best spectacles on, wonld not recog- 
nize me. 

I have written a long news-letter without one word of 
news in it ; and yet it would be easy to write columns, for 
one half of the people here are reporting news from the 
interior, and the other half are contradicting it. 

People say that the rebellion is dying out. Tliey expect 
every day news that Chin-Kiang-Foo is retaken by the 
Imperialists, and opinions are strong that Xankin will not 
long hold out. 

This, if true, is very important news for us, for it clears 
the Yang-tse-Kiang and the Imperial canal, where our 
operations both for war and commerce were most likely to 
be complicated by the presence of these insurgents. 

I believe the news to be correct to a certain extent, and 
in a certain sense. If the rebellion be not wearing out, it is 
shifting. Chin-Kiang-Foo and ISTankin are consumed. The 
locust has eaten every leaf, and must take another flight or 
die. " Wait a while, all will come right — ten years, per- 
haps," has always been the Chinese view, and they think 
the time is now near. They have tested this rebellion, and 
find it has no root. The old Chinese families do not join it, 
the merchants have no confidence in it, no literati except 
one degraded graduate has yet gone over ; therefore they 
think it will never be more than an excuse for brigandage^ 
and that it will always be local and transitory. 

This is the opinion of the Chinese hereabouts ; and as we 
are within 200 miles of the seat of rebel government, their 
opinions deserve some attention. I question, however^ 
whether they know much of what is passing in the south. 

The Remi starts on the 9th with the mail for England, 
and a cargo of silk which they say will give the Peninsular 
and Oriental Company £9,000 freight. 

I hope to write you next from Ningpo, which city I 
intend to reach by a semicircular route through the inland 
parts of Chekiang. 



102 



CHAPTER XI. 

A JOURNEY INLAND. 

Preparations— My Soucliau Boat — Eavirons of Shanghai — The Wang- 
poo Eiver — The Pagoda — View from the Pagoda — Musings — Night 
on the Wangpoo — A Chinese Physician — His Opinion of the Rebels 
— The Christian Missionaries and the Eebels — Up the Wangpoo — 
Canals and Great Cities — Kiahing — Keashin — We enter upon the 
Imperial Canal — Irrigation-wheels — Fishing Cormorants — Scenes 
on the Banks of the Imperial Canal — Imperial Grain-junks — 
Distant View of Hangchow. 

At tlie close of my last despatch, while the anthorifcies at 
Hongkong were resolving upon a formal blockade of the 
river, — a measure which was convenient to the fleet, and 
which the ripened rice-harvest renders not very important 
to the Cantonese, — I was about to employ the interval of 
Lord Elgin's absence in gathering a little experience in the 
interior. 

On the appointed day, Mr. Edkins, the missionary, Dr. 
Dickson, of Canton, and myself, started in three Souchau 
boats, with a fair flood-tide, up the Wang-poo river. Our 
object was to reach Ningpo through the network of internal 
canals, and without crossing the bay. This is a journey 
never yet made even by the missionaries, and Mr. Edkins 
regards it as a pioneering expedition preparatory to future 
labours. 

Our first stage is to Hangchow, and thus far our boatmen 
have covenanted to convey us. These Souchau boats are 
somewhat like the larger gondolas which go outside into the 
Adriatic. The cabins are fitted up with no little pretension : 
mine had plate-glass windows ; much carving and some 
gilding had been lavished upon it. There was a joss-house, 
with a vacant niche for any idol I might fancy to put there, 
and two ecclesiastical candlesticks, upon the spikes whereof 
I might, if I had pleased, burn any sized joss-sticks or wax 



PREPARATIONS FOR TKE INTERIOR. 103 

candles. The extent of this, my habitation for the next six 
days, was, however, not great — it was seven feet six inches 
square. Nor was there provision for effeminate luxury. 
There was a locker, within which I might put my most 
important baggage, on which I could spread my bamboo 
matting, and over which I hung my mosquito curtains ; 
there was a small table and two camphor-wood stools. 
What more can a man want ? There was a box, with 
" Fortnum and Mason's" name upon it, in one corner, a 
modicum of sherry and Bordeaux, and a dozen of soda-water, 
in another corner, and a revolver and double-barrelled gun 
liandy to the grip. The use of the firearms is, I believe, 
solely this : the boatmen will not go on at night unless they 
know you have them. The adroitness of the Chinese thieves 
will justify their contempt for any barbarian swell mobs- 
man. Mr. Edkins not long since found that some one had, 
^luring his slumbers, crept in at the cabin- window, taken his 
keys out of his pocket, opened his trunk, and abstracted all 
his dollars, leaving the trunk open, and nothing else, not 
even the proprietor, disturbed. But I do not hear of any 
open piratical attacks up the country, and you do not want 
firearms to drive away a thief. The first thing he v/ould 
steal would probably be the gun and the revolver. 

Off we go, then, up this tributary of the Yang-tse-Kiang. 
About four miles an hour is our pace, propelled as we are 
by one gigantic oar, worked over the stern by three men, 
curved in the handle, and made to perform in the water the 
evolution we call sculling. We pass through the European 
shipping, by the floating bath, and into and along moored 
tiers of junks, which may almost vie in numbers with the 
shipping in our Pool. Hundreds of these ply between 
Shanghai and Amoy, bringing sugar here and taking cotton 
back. A thousand others will start this season for Shan- 
tung, and will carry with them 100,000 pieces of our gray 
shirtings — a demand owing, the merchants say, to exceptional 
causes. 

In an hour we are clear of the environs of Shanghai, and 
we look to see the river contract to the proper decent 
dimensions of a third-rate stream. iNTothing of the sort. 
Seven miles up, the Wangpoo is still quite a mile in width. 



104 CHINA. 

and for the greenness and flatness of its banks, and the 
European outline of foliage, we might be a little belov/ 
Gravesend. 

Resenting, perhaps, my small respect for him as a third- 
class river, the Wangpoo treats lis to a capful of wind just 
as the tide is finished, and the boatmen incontinently run 
into a creek, which leads up to a village possessing a high 
pagoda and a Buddhist monastery. 

On our walk to the village, — quickly speeding, for we 
hope to reach the pagoda before the sun has set, — I notice 
the same lavish expenditure of labour in paving the foot- 
l^aths and bridging the dikes with slabs of limestone or 
granite, which struck me in the neighbourhood of Shanghai 
The pagoda, from the galleries of which nothing is visible 
but the limitless fat plain and the frequent villages, is of 
course a thing comparatively of yesterday. The Buddhists 
brought the form from India not long before the birth of 
Christ ; but these products of untiring toil, these mounds 
and dikes, these countless masses of enormous stones brought 
from afar — still more those practical, matter-of-fact, sabbath- 
less, business-loving, pleasure-despising habits of mind, which, 
under a less corrupt and depressing system of rule, would 
lead the present race of Chinese to sustain these works and 
to create others — that insensibility to play of fancy, yet 
love of quaint conceits and forced antitheses — that incapacity 
to feel grace and beauty, yet strong appreciation of mere 
geometrical symmetry — that complete disconnection from 
(not divergence from) all the modes of thought and vehicles 
of thought, traditions, and superstitions of other nations — 
these things suggest a train of dreamy musings, and send 
the mind wandering back to times almost as old as that 
setting sun. May it not be that we have here a not very 
degenerate specimen of a civilization that covered the vv^hole 
earth before our traditions begin — which spread and flourished 
before the Semitic or the Indo-Germanic race had being — 
which has left its traces in India and in England, in Mexico 
and in Italy, in California and in Greece, in Brittany and in 
iJ^ormandy, and in the most remote islands of the ocean ; 
pilers of mounds and hewers of mountains, builders of 
Babels, whose might was quenched we know not how, and 



KIGHT ON THE WANGPOO. 105 

■whose sparse descendants we can just trace under the names, 
of Egyptians, Pelasgians, or Etruscans, mingling with new 
races and losing their identity. 

We passed the night upon the wide and troubled waters 
of the Wangpoo. With less of meekness than befitted the 
peaceful character of my companion, I insisted upon start- 
ing as soon as the flood-tide made. Every wave seemed to 
break under the flat bottom of my boat, and she rolled and 
quivered and creaked as though she would have quoted 
Mencius to rebuke my impatience. But the night was very 
beautiful. It was so hot that I lay outside, with my head 
against the broad junk-like prow, and even the rushing wind_ 
brought no coolness, The round moon looked down in all 
her splendour, but did not dim the light of the big stars. 
Ever, as one of our sister boats went ahead, the oar oscillating 
to and fro at her stern produced a sheet of phosphoric 
radiance, which neither moon nor stars could pale. Some- 
times we neared the banks, and then the monotonous croak, 
of the frog was heard, and in sheltered places flights of fire- 
flies, like flakes of diamond, fluttered up and down among 
the cotton-plants, and then also myriads of mosquitoes of 
great stature came off", and sounded their declarations of war 
in my ears. 

We were not alone on the Wangpoo. On the contrary, 
there were never less than a hundred sail in sight. Some 
were beating up and others were coming down, the strong 
monsoon urging them swiftly against the tide. Sometimes 
collisions seemed imminent, but a little shouting and all 
went clear. 

Erom three o'clock till eight I slept, and awoke to find 
myself moored against the village of Min-Hang. While at 
this village I fell in with a Chinese physician, who had 
escaped from Nankin when it fell into the hands of the 
rebels. He was the first specimen of a Chinese gentleman 
I had seen. The villages in this neighbourhood contain 
many fugitives from the rebel districts. The Government 
lodges them in the temples and allows them thirty cash 
(about 2>d.) a day, wherewith, at the present prices, they 
cannot buy even a sufficiency of rice. Of course disease is 
common among them, and this benevolent old gentleman 



106 CHINA. 

devotes himself to tlieir care. He came on board my boat, 
and we had a long chat. He insists that the key of the 
Yang-tse-Kiang, Chin-Kiang, has been recovered by the 
Imperialists ; for his friends at Souchau have written to 
him to say so. I doubt this, however ; for if this decisive 
event had happened, the Government would certainly have 
announced it at Shanghai. 

His view is that the rebellion is dying out. He says 
the locusts have destroyed it, having especially come upon 
those provinces where the rebels hold their sway. He does 
not rest his expectation upon the Imperial armies, for he 
says the rebels are robbers and murderers, accustomed to 
every artifice, and adepts in all villany. All the loyal 
people can do is to hem the conflagration round and wait 
till it burns out. 

These are the opinions of a well-informed Chinese 
gentleman, who has seen much more of these rebels than 
the Europeans who have written upon the subject. About 
forty-eight hours is the longest period that any European 
has been among them, and they have never invited any 
closer intercourse. Mr. Edkins interpreted for me these 
sayings of my Chinese acquaintance with no great satisfac- 
tion. The missionaries still hang their hope upon this rebel 
cause. The facts are unpromising, but still they hope. 
Devastation and bloodshed track the course of these in- 
surgents wherever they go, but these are only necessary 
incidents of ci\il war. The ruin of those public works 
which are to China what their dams are to the Dutch, mark 
where these rebels are, and where they have been. Still 
more widely-extended ruin follows upon the exhaustion of 
the Imperial treasury. The two great rivers, no longer 
restrained by the great artificial embankments, now suffered 
to decay, are altering their courses and devastating tracts as 
large as European kingdoms. Perhaps a man whose fervid 
religious zeal is akin to that which animated Joshua or 
Gideon, may see in all this but the will of God working to 
a great end : but the religious facts are not encouraging. 
The nominal head of the movement, claimed as a missionary 
convert, has sought no communication with any Christian 
teacher. He boasts himself the sovereim of the whole 



RELIGION OP THE REBELS. 107 

earth, calls himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ, 
and claims to have constant personal intercourse with the 
Almighty. His second in command, the king of the 
East, blasphemously styled himself the Holy Ghost ; but he 
has been slain in internecine conflict, and the great leader, 
or his counsellors, proved their vigour and their Christian 
humanity by butchering two thousand of his adherents in 
cold blood. 

This does not look like a hopeful result of a missionary 
conversion, nor does it give much promise of temporal 
success to the insurrectionary movement. But then these 
reformers put to death the " idolaters," whether they call 
themselves the priests of Buddha or the missionaries of the 
Pope ; they forbid opium-smoking under pain of death, and 
tobacco-smoking under pain of blows ; they appear to have 
read, although they have misinterpreted, the sacred books 
which the missionaries distribute. Amid the outpourings 
of blood, in famine and pestilence, in the wreck of all the 
physical good which antiquity has wrought, our missionaries 
think they see a hope for the religion of the Bible. We 
must not expect from men whose zeal sends them forth 
among the heathen a sober and chastened faith ; but, with 
all allowance for their strongly militant position, it is hard 
to understand how so faint and indefinite a hope can blind 
their eyes and deafen their ears to the material woes which 
this rebellion has produced. Yet we have men here who 
have gone among them in the same spirit as Samuel went to 
Saul, and who have produced scandal even among their own 
body, by urging these ruffians to go forth and kill. 

Mr. Edkins is a man of very different spirit to such as 
these. Upon the testimony of the linguists of Pa,ris and of the 
Chinese here, I know him to be one of the greatest of Chinese 
scholars, and from my own intercourse with him I can say 
that he is fairly read in the sciences, and well acquainted 
with Western literature. He has undertaken the task of 
showing the Chinese that we have a literature, and thus 
disabusing them of that contempt which extends itself to 
our faith. His American coadjutor, Dr. McGowan, under- 
takes to instruct their graduates in the mysteries of the 
electric telegraph, and their pilots in the law of storms. 



108 CHINA. 

Missionary labours tlms directed must result in good. Your 
medical missionaries, such as Dr. Lockliart and Dr. Parker, 
command the gratitude and goodwill of the people. Men 
of learning like Mr. Edkins and Dr. McGowan gradually 
compel the resj)ect of the literati. These men are plough- 
ing a soil in expectation of a seed-time which is not yet. 
To the missionary societies of England and America I 
would say, hce tihi erunt artes, — ignorant declaimers in bad 
Chinese have no success in China. Their preaching is 
foolishness in more than the Apostolic sense ; but this 
practical and conceited people only jeer and blaspheme. 

Yet I have found even the higher class of missionaries 
hoping against hope that the rebels may succeed, and that 
they may turn out to be Christians. I have objected to 
them the material miseries the insurrection has caused ; 
they have quoted against me Mr. Cousin's defence of war, 
which is no other than that war is in itself a good, and that 
the abridgment of longevity is not necessarily an evil. 
"When I reply that this is all that could be said by an infidel 
philosopher against a certain article in the Decalogue, they 
have replied that, notwithstanding this commandment, the 
Israelites were enjoined to exterminate the Canaanites. I 
reply that to establish an analogy between the cases, it will 
be necessary to admit Taeping- wang's pretensions to direct 
personal intercourse with God the Pather. No missionary 
is prepared for this admission, and our argument closes. 
With these men it is a hope and a sympathy which they 
cannot but feel and cannot justify. With some others it is 
a truculent spirit of partisanship, embittered not a little by 
envy and hatred of the merchants. 

I know no more of the rebels than others who write 
about them do ; that is, I know very little indeed ; but 
having talked the matter over daily and in all societies for 
the last two months, I know pretty well what the views of 
the officials, merchants, and missionaries are upon the 
subject, 

Meanwhile, my Chinese guest is sipping his tea, looking 
through my opera-glass, and condoling with me upon my 
sad condition in not being able to understand, Chinese. I 
hope I omitted no point of ceremonial with him. When he 



A BATH AT KIAHTXG. 109 

begged to present me his spectacles, which I had affected to 
admire, and pressed them upon me with as much earnestness 
and sincerity as a Downing-street secretary assures 3^ou he 
is your most obedient, humble servant, I declined the gift 
according to Chinese forms; but I confess I could not prevail 
upon myself to offer him my opera-glass. Human nature is 
weak, and the China gentleman's admiration was evidently 
very strong. We parted with a hundred chin-chins. 

Tip the flood-tide of the Wangpoo. Dr. Dickson's boat 
separated from us last night, and is not come up. The 
boatmen talk of perils from pirates or foundering in the 
storm. We wait and send back runners, and, learning no 
tidings, conclude he has returned to Shanghai. Two large 
navigable tributaries fall in, but the river above is not much 
decreased in width. After some hom-s' further voyage the 
Wangpoo loses its name and form. It divides into two 
equal channels, one of which descends from the right, and 
comes down from a string of lakes that extends to Souchau ; 
the other is our way. Tributaries and canals now come 
quickly in, showing how wonderfully ramified is the internal 
water-communication of this land. Of course the volume 
of the stream contracts as we ascend. At night the action 
of the tide is but faintly felt, and we anchor in a channel 
about fifty yards wide. In the moonlight Dr. Dickson's 
boat comes up with a tale of adventure. The next day was 
a day of canals and great cities. 

I have a Ningpo servant, hired for this trip ; for when, 
upon arriving at Shanghai, I found Mr. A'Lin trying to 
communicate with his countrymen by means of Canton 
English, it was plain that he would not be of much use to 
me in difiiculties up the country. I had no idea that these 
provincials were so entirely incomprehensible to each other. 
The voice of A'Yu awoke me to a sense that I was a public 
character. We were moored in the suburb of the city of 
Kiahing, and every barge in the neighbourhood was crowded 
by spectators contemplating the sleeping and, doubtless, 
snoring barbarian. The excitement was very great when 
the outer foreigner threw aside his mosquito curtains and 
appeared in loose jacket and sleeping trousers; but it reached 
its highest point when he took a header into the canal. 



110 CHINA. 

The best part of tlie entertainment, liov/evei', seemed to be 
when the barbarian, his swim being accomplished, had to 
climb up the rope into the boat, with his dripping pajamas, 
and pnll all his curtains about him. The water is quite 
clean, and the Chinese throw nothing away. We have now 
got into districts where the people very rarely see foreigners, 
and their surprise and astonishmxcnt are as great as if they 
had never even seen one before. I confess I think this 
perpetual mobbing insufferable. My Chinese disguise does 
very well to go through a city in a chair, but it will not do 
to walk about with. The first dog I meet resents the 
imposture and draws upon me the criticism and curiosity of 
the multitude. A Chinese bourgeois wears no hat. He is 
the only human creature who shaves his head and defies the 
blazing sun. Five minutes of this would infallibly produce 
brain fever in a Euro]3ean ; so we are obliged to use either 
the straw hat of the Chinese peasant or the pith hat of the 
Hongkong merchant. You must, however, wear Chinese 
clothes ; you could not move a step through these cities in. 
European clothes — they would excite a frenzy of curiosity. 
I saw much more of the city of Kiahing by water than I 
did by land; but these cities of the delta are like Venice or 
Amsterdam, it is only from their canals that you can see 
them. 

Although but a third-class city, we were at least an hour 
passing through Kiahing. There are vast stores of that 
thick pottery-ware used at Shanghai for baths and coarser 
utensils, much of it well ornamented. There are large 
carpenters' shops containing the simple silk-winding machine 
of the Chinese, in every stage of completion. We are now 
far advanced into the silk district. There is a large esta- 
blishment for crushing seeds and making oil. We land to 
inspect it, and the proi:)rietor is polite and explanatory. 
There are tea-shops overhanging the water, and the cus- 
tomers, naked to the waist, are lounging and smoking, and 
sipping from their little cups a weak infusion without milk 
or sugar. Then there is a break in the continuity of habita- 
tions — a rick of rice-straw and a grove of mulberry-trees ; 
not large round-topped trees such as we see in France and 
Italy, but trees free to grow as nature pleases, and bearing 



KIAHING. Ill 

their leaves down to the bottom of tlieir stems. Of the 
millions of mulberry-trees I have seen in this part, every one 
has a good healthy foliage, and not one has been stripped in 
the manner I have somewhere seen described. Passing this 
agricultural interval, we again immerge into the city. We 
seem now to be in a district of merely domestic dwellings. 
The enormous signboards covered with gigantic Chinese 
characters are less frequent. There is a fat Chinawoman 
and her pretty little round, plump daughter hanging out 
clothes in a very small number of square inches of dryiug- 
ground under the eaves of their cottage. In another build- 
ing there is a solitary damsel employed upon her embroidery ; 
and in another a palm-leaf fan is being used to drive the 
mosquitoes out of the curtains. The little domesticities of 
life are going on while the men are at business. Throughout 
the whole extent of Kiahing, and of every other city in this 
neighbourhood, there are well-finished quays of faced granite, 
haviug at every twenty yards broad stone stairs down into 
the water ; upon these the long-tailed race, both men and 
children, stand and fish. Some of the stores are very ex- 
tensive, run a long way back, aud are divided from their 
neighbours by thick and high party-walls ; but the houses 
are all built to the same pattern — a garret above a shop, 
a slanting roof of tiles, and projecting eaves over both 
the shop and the garret. This is the unvarying form. 
Signboards with immense characters, the presence or 
absence of flowerpots and casements, and the various cha- 
racters of the commodities for sale, constitute the only 
difference. We entered Kiahing through an archway in 
the wall, and quitted it through a similar aperture. There 
is no difference between the city and the suburb, except 
tha,t inside the walls the canals are narrower. 

Again we were in the country, among the mulberry-trees 
and the rice-fields, the i^atches of tobacco, the sepulchral 
mounds, with their waving banners of high reeds, the 
gourds trellised on bamboo framework, and the agricultural 
population all at work — men and women, with equal energy, 
treading at their irrigation-wheels. Here is the secret of 
the fertility of this great delta. Every hundred yards a 
little family treadwheel, with its line of tiny buckets, is 



112 CHINA. 

erected over the canal, and the water is thrown up to refresh 
the mulberry-trees or mature the rice. When the Arabs 
learn to labour like this, the plain of the Metidja may 
become as productive as this delta of the two rivers. We 
must have passed 10,000 people to-day engaged in this 
irrigation process. 

Towards evening we arrived at the first-class city of 
Keashin, where I found myself surrounded by all the scum 
of the city. They were never hostile, but they stoop and 
poke out their heads and stare their very hardest at you 
in a close circle. They gently lay hold on your hand to 
examine j^our ring ; they beg to be allowed to remove your 
spectacles, and make the most impertinent remarks upon 
-the colour of your eyes. Mine are of the most ridiculous 
and unnatural of all colours — blue ; and they are such a 
curiosity that a crowd of Chinamen will stare at them for 
half an hour without winking, but occasionally laughing 
heartily to each other. My chief jjersecutor at Keashin was 
a fellow who squinted horribly. I thought myself justified 
in pointing out this fact to the crowd, and thus got rid of 
him ; for tliere was a roar of laughter, amid which he slunk 
away. 

All this is mere curiosity : there is no feeling of hostility 
to strangers. If a mandarin were officially informed of our 
presence, we should probably be arrested and sent back ; tlie 
fact that no one cares to do so, shows that the people feel no 
displeasure at our presence. 

After a little intercourse this would all cease, but at 
present it is an insufferable affliction. I am not fastidious ; 
but a hundred Chinamen crowding round and pushing one 
another close upon you, is not a pleasant position. You 
must add; moreover, that the thermometer is standing at 100, 
that these fellows are all naked to the waist, and that the 
Chinese are not only a 'cute race, but also eminently a 
cutaneous people. 

Keashin is but a larger Kiahing. All these cities on the 
plain are just alike. At Keashin, however, we leave that 
network of canals which, although over fifty yards broad, 
are now narrowed to a channel by light bamboo partitions 
on each side. The inclosed sidewater is hired and cultivated 



TKE IMPERIAL CANAL. 113 

as gardens for ling, a water-loving root wliich tlie English call 
" buffalo-head," and which the Chinese much affect. Worse, 
liowever, than the ling-gardens, the huge hulks of the 
Imperial grain-junks encumber these small canals. Since 
the rebels have been established at IsTankin, the inland com- 
munication has been stopped, and the food of Pekin goes 
round by sea. Many hundreds, therefore, of these junks 
have become useless. They are rotting in all directions, 
filling up the channels — some above water, some below, all 
of them in decay. They must not be broken up, or sold, or 
burnt — they are Imperial property. At Keashin we enter 
upon the Imperial canal. Between the carefully piled banks 
of this noble river, for it is as wide as the Thames at Kew, 
we journey for three days, passing and sometimes tarrying 
at villages and towns and cities. It is the country, how- 
ever, which is most interesting. 

" God made the country, and man made the town," 

may be true in England, but here man has as much to do in 
making the country as in making the city. 

There is no lack of objects as we pass up, towed by these 
hardy boatmen. The irrigation-wheels are constantly going ; 
men and women working under their awning of mats. The 
junks and boats are never ceasing. Who shall number the 
vehicles for water-carriage which China possesses? The 
fisherman with his flock of fishing cormorants perched on 
his punt or swimming after him, is passing up under the 
bank ; and I notice that if a cormorant gets a large fish 
which he cannot swallow, he takes it to the punt and re- 
ceives something which his master pushes into his mouth in 
return for it ; but if it be an eel or small fish he tries to 
escape with it and swallow it, and if he is beyond the reach 
of the fisherman's crook, he generally does so. Near the 
towns the banks are lined at intervals of a few hundred 
yards with triumphal monuments in stone. Tliese monuments 
are of one type, but not always of one pattern — two upright 
square pillars, two or three horizontal bars bearing inscrip- 
tions, and a pediment on the top like a section of the roof of 
a Chinese temple. They have erected six of these at Canton 
to celebrate the expulsion of the English. Here they com- 

I 



114 CHINA. 

memorate the virtues of some defunct matron. There are 
graves also. Sometimes these are mounds, sometimes cofans 
placed upon the earth, and sometimes coffins cased over with 
dry brickwork. Occasionally a beggar has made his home 
in the coffin, and comes forth from it to beg. 

The only Chinese objects which, to the eye of Western 
taste, are really beautiful, are the bridges that cross their 
canals at frequent intervals. The willow-pattern plate, so 
faithful in other matters, does not do them justice. Occa- 
sionally they consist of three arches, but generally of only one. 
In the latter case, solid masonry of carefully faced granite or 
limestone advances into the water from either side. In 
the centre springs a light and graceful arch, more than a 
semicircle, quite half an oval ; it springs forty feet high, and 
the crown of the arch has not two feet of superstructure 
resting upon it. There is no keystone, but the thin coping 
stones are cut in the proper curve. The bridge itself is a 
terrace mounted by steps on either side at an angle of forty- 
five degrees. The effect is very graceful and airy ; and as 
no wheeled carriages are used in China (excej)t wheel- 
barrows), they answer all practical purposes. A sunset on 
the Imperial canal, with the monuments on the banks, a 
vista of these bridges, and the mountains of JSTganhwul in 
the far distance, is a sight I shall remember when I look 
again upon Claudes and Turners. 

We are thankful that at last there are mountains in view ; 
for this perpetual level, fat and fertile as it is, grows 
depressing. 

It is our fifth day, and we are expecting to reach Hang- 
chow, where all our difficulties of transit must be expected. 

While writing I have j^assed along five miles of rural 
district with banks all built up, like a Parisian quay, of 
wrought granite, and the towing-path carried over stone 
bridges which cross the frequent branches of this immense 
artifical navigation. I despair of conveying the idea of 
Cyclopean work, enormous traffic, patient industry, vast 
natural fertility, individual content, and peaceful prosperity 
with which this journey impresses me. The pagodas are in 
ruins, and where the quays have fallen tliere is no hand to 
repair them. The Imperial grain-junks are rotting, and the 



HANGCHOY.' IX THE DISTANCE. 115 

few forts are in decay. But these evidences of decrepitude 
in the rulers have not yet operated to affect the personal 
happiness which springs from fertile lands and industrious 
husbandmen. 

At the end of one of the long straight lines of this high- 
way we discern at last a far- extending mass of houses, whose 
•walls exult in bright whitewash, and whose roofs are all of 
old gray tiles. These houses seem to extend far back and 
to overspread the plain that intervenes between the bank 
of the canal and the highlands that form the background of 
our present view. 

This, seen through a mob of junks, moving and still, is 
Hangchow as it appears from the Imperial canal. All 
things indicate the capital of a great province. Our old 
friends, the Imperial grain-junks, have been rotting in 
hundreds for the last ten miles ; the canal has been of 
extending width, mandarin passage-boats, towed by strings 
of coolies, have gone by, sounding their gongs and flaunting 
their banners, while the mandarin looked out from his seat 
of honour, and from behind his tan eagerly eyed the 
strangers. The commercial navy of China [pii^r sang — no 
schooners or lorchas) was taking in paper, tea, rice, oil, 
bamboo basket-work, and a thousand other articles of 
produce. They are loading the tea here in its natural state, 
in chests protected by matting. It is all for Shanghai and 
the export market ; that is to say, it is all of that high- 
dried kind which will pass the sea. I counted eighteen 
junks, of about 200 tons each, lying together ready-laden 
with this European necessity. 



I 2 



116 CHINA. 



CHAPTER XII. 

HANGCHOW AND ITS SUBURBS. 

The ''Ta Kwan," or '' Gx*eat Custom House " — Difficiilty of Entering- 
Hangchow — The Sehoo Lake — Buddhist Temples — The " Yun 
Lin "—The Philosophy of the Buddhists— The Ten Gods of Hell 
— The "Do-Nothings" — The Taoists — The Confucians— Apathy of 
the Chinese in Religious Matters — Entry into Hangchow — Interior 
of the City — Journey Onwards — Arrival at Ningpo — Reflections 
upon this Journey. 

Suburbs of Hangchow, August 11. 
The irrigation-wheel lias now entirely given way to the 
wharf. The banks on either side are as the banks of the 
Thames when the river reaches the city's eastern suburb. 
High above roofs and masts rise two lofty poles, whose cross 
bars show them to be ensigns of official authority. They stand 
before a large public edifice. In China all public edifices 
are of the same pattern ; joss-houses and palaces and public 
offices might and very frequently do interchange their pur- 
poses without much alteration. The building l)efore us has 
the usual double tier of shelving roofs with upturned corners, 
as though the original designer of this style had taken the 
prows of four Greek galleys and put them together, with 
their rostra facing to the four cardinal points. It also has 
a very extensive gallery, which comes out on piles into the 
canal, and is roofed and ornamented in proper official style, 
and crowded with Chinese officials. This building is the 
celebrated " Psin Kwan," or " Ta Kwan," — the " new" or 
the '•' great" Custom-house. This is the foe of Manchester 
and Leeds, and Nottingham and Sheffield. This is the first 
lock in the ascending water-way. Here British calicoes get 
their first lift, to be still further lifted at very short stages. 
There is no escape. Here the Imperial canal ends. There 
are small feeders which come down from places in the 
neighbourhood, but here the navigation ceases. There is a 
magnificent navigable river which rolls on the other side of 



THE "great custom-house." 117 

the city, but with this the Imperial canal has no connection. 
Such is the Imj^erial policy. Here at Hangchow everything 
must be trans-shipped. 

We 2:)ullecl up at the custom-house, and I prepared for the 
rigorous search which must take place. I was determined 
to solve this mystery of the differential duties. I had a 
piece of printed calico and a packet of clasp-knives, and also 
some of my Chinese clothing, not yet worn, on the table 
before me. I was fully resolved to have a considerable dis- 
cussion over the payment for these things. 

After a few moments, a man, something between the 
coolie and comprador class, and without even the small 
pyramidal official straw-hat, put his head into the boat and 
said, as plain as unintelligible words and significant gesture 
could speak, " That will do — go on." 

'•' Bat tell him," roared I to A'yu, " that I have duties to 
pay." 

'• He talkee all right." 

" Tell him these boxes are all full of salt, and the boat is 
full of contraband goods." 

" He talkee maskee." 

" Tell him we haven't paid the boat toll." 

" He talkee bamboo boatee men." 

At this hint we were at once propelled from the shore^ 
and I was left with my British produce to mourn over the 
fallibility of the best-laid schemes. It was quite evident 
now that the officials were determined to ignore our presence. 
I knew there was a toU that would amount to nearly a 
dollar each on our boats j they refused, however, to take it 
from us. They allow us now to pass the custom-house 
unquestioned. They are clearly treating the three English- 
men as Dogberry thought it best to treat rogues. Now I 
began to make frantic inquiries from Chinamen about the 
matter I had intended to settle for myself I am told that 
at this " Ta Kwan" they take 15 cash, or about three- 
halfpence, for a piece of China cloth, and 400 cash, or 35., 
for English. A Chinaman will always give you an answer, 
and it will generally be the first phrase that comes into his 
head. I paid little attention to this assertion, and should 
not have repeated it, but that it seems to accord with my 



118 CHINA. 

subsequent experience. Shanghai is full of English goods ; 
at Keahing and Keashun I saw some English " domestics ;'* 
but after we had passed the " Ta Kwan," I never saw any- 
thing English exhibited for sale, except English sewing 
cotton, which had penetrated even to the primitive city of 
Peh Kwan. It may be that the duties on English goods 
are as heavy as my Chinese informant says, but I must admit 
that I do not think the testimony worth much.'"' 

We now held a council. Shall we try to invade the city 
or not ? Hangchow is, next to Pekin, the most zealously- 
guarded city in the empire. " There is Heaven above, but 
there are Hangchow and Soochoo on earth," say the Chinese 
poets. It wsis for no short time the Imperial capital. It 
has always been essentially Chinese. Annals of martyrdoms 
tell still of the massacre of 800 Christians at Hangchow. 
During the last war many of our kidnapped sailors were sent 
here as to a place of security, and butchered after a mock 
trial. Several Europeans have said they have been into the 
city, but they have given no more description of the place 
than if they had not been there. They probably passed 
through in well-closed chairs. Even this cannot be easily 
done. The last attempt made was by Mr. Edkins, and it 
resulted in his being taken into custody and sent back under 
an escort on his road to Shanghai. 

On the whole, it was thought wiser to go on at once to 
the famous lake with its gardens of ling, its fairy tea-houses, 
its mighty Buddhist temples, its Imperial palace, and its 
pagoda-crowned surrounding mountains. On one side it 
Tvashes the city walls, so we shall not be far away. It is 
the glory of Hangchow and the boast of the Celestial 
Empire ; so it is probably much better worth seeing than 
the city itself. 

Village op Sehoo, August 14. 

Avoiding the gates of Hangchow, and making wide 
circuit, we tracked our way through devious ditches up to a 
village about half a mile distant from the lake and about a 
mile distant from the walls of Hangchow. This village is 
full of coolies and chairs, and its business seems to be to 

*It will be seen th^t after-inquiries confirmed my distrust. 



THE TEMPLE OF THE CLOUDY FOREST. 119 

convey the burgesses of Hangcliow about to the temples 
and gardens. There is no entrance into the lake for us. 
We lie off the village in six inches of green water. Ague 
and fever seem to float around. 

Three nights we slept in this swamp. 

Our days were passed in the great Buddhist temples and 
in the monasteries of the bonzes. They take us to the 
temple of the Great Buddha — a mighty bust, forty feet high, 
carved out of the rock and gilt ; thence to a still larger 
temple, where a moving pagoda and forty-nine colossal idols 
commemorate the forty-nine transmigrations of Buddha. 
Thence across rich pleasure-grounds, where streamlets ripple 
and some spots are shady, but where still that knife-grinding 
din pursues us, for — 

" Sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis." 

We are borne to the temple of the Fish Buddha, where 
enormous carp grow fat in pleasant ponds. At least a 
thousand of them ■ contended for our votive biscuits, and 
some of them weighed, to a fisherman's eye, quite 401b. 

These tem^jles, however, great as they are in size and 
grotesqueness, are but as little Welsh churches compared to 
the wonders of the " Yun Lin," the " Cloudy Forest." 
This is not so much a temple as a region of temples. 

It is suggestive of the scenes of those ancient Pagan 
mysteries, where the faith and fortitude of neophites were 
tried, and their souls purified by successive terrors. It is a 
limestone district, abounding in caves and far-reaching dark 
galleries and mysterious internal waters. These natural 
opportunities are improved by a priest and an altar in every 
cave, gigantic idols cut into the rock in unexpected places, 
rays of heavenly light which only the faithful votary ought 
to be able to see, but which, as they come through holes 
bored through the hill, sceptics sometimes catch sight of; 
inscriptions 2,000 years old, but deepened as time wears 
them. The place is a labyrinth of carved rocks, a happy 
valley of laughing Buddhas, and Queens of Heaven, and 
squatting Buddhas, and hideous hook-nosed gods of India. 
There is a pervading smell of frankincense, and the single 
priest found here and there in solitary places, moaning his 



120 CHINA. 

ritual, makes the place yet more lonely ; and through, this 
strange scene you pass by narrow paths to the foot of 
i;he colossal terrace steps which mount to the great temple 
itself. The wild birds are flying about this vast echoing 
hall of Buddha j the idols are still bigger and still more 
richly gilt. In the great " gallery of five hundred gods/' all 
that can be done by art, laborious, but ignorant of beauty, 
reaches its climax. 

The cowled and tonsured bonzes come forth to gi'eet us. 
Excellent tea and great choice of sweetmeats av/ait us in 
the refectory. 

The wonders of this Sehoo Lake deserve better descrip- 
tion than the object of these letters will allow me to 
attempt. The temple and tomb of the faithful minister of 
state, Yo Fei, occupy acres of ground and thousands of 
tons of monumental wood, stone, and iron. The Imperial 
Palace upon the lake, with its garden of rock work and 
green ponds, its large library of unused books, its dim metal 
mirrors, richly embroidered cushions, and rickety old chairs, 
opened to us with great difficulty, and under the immediate 
pressure of the almighty dollar. I hope some one under 
less imperative obligation to eschew the merely picturesque 
and to seek only for facts which may have practical bearings 
may yet describe these objects. My favourite eventide 
occupation was to ascend one of these hills, and sit at the 
foot of one of these half-burnt pagodas which stand about 
like blasted cypress-trees, and look down upon Hangchow. 
The famous city lies like a map beneath me. Not a curl of 
smoke, not a building more lofty than the orthodox two- 
storied josshouse. I can follow the line of outer walls, and 
even track the course of the inner enceinte. Marco Polo 
says they were 100 miles round, and a Chinese chronicler 
records that in a single conflagration, while Hangchow was 
yet the capital of China, 530,000 houses were burned. 
These are foolish fables. Hangchow, from its position, never 
could have been much larger than it now is. It stands 
upon a slip of land about three miles wide, intervening 
between the river (which is wider than the Mersey and has 
thirty feet of water at low tide) and this lake. At one end 
the ground swells into a hill, across the crest of which the 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BHUDDISM. 121 

city wall passes. The shape of Hangchow, therefore, is- 
very much that of a couch, the hill part being represented 
by the pillows, and being the fashionable part of the city, 
I can see not only public temples, but also many of those 
private ancestral temples, which are to a Chinese gentleman 
Avhat the chancel of his parish church is to an English 
squire. Little gardens, perhaps not forty feet square, full of 
weeds and rockwork and small ponds ; an oblong pavilion 
with tablets upon the walls, descriptive of the names and 
achievements of the ancestors — a kneeling stool, an incense 
vase, candlesticks, a brazier to burn paper made in imitation 
of Sycee silver, and a sacrificial tub — such is a Chinaman's 
private chapel. Here he comes on solemn days, and, the 
garden being weeded, and all things painted and renewed 
for the occasion, he prays and sacrifices to his ancestors, and 
feasts with his friends. If the Chinaman has a superstition, 
this is it. His Bhuddism is a ceremonial to the many and 
a speaulative philosojDhy to the adept, no more. Mr. Edkins'& 
object in visiting the temples of the lake, was to hold 
controversy with the priests, so I had more opportunity of 
hearing what they really believe than usually falls to the lot 
of travellers who cannot read the Pali books. They did 
not feel his arguments against idolatry. They treat their- 
grotesque gods with as much contempt as we do. They 
divide the votaries into three classes. First come the 
learned men who perform the ritual and observe the absti- 
nence from animal food merely as a matter of discipline, 
but place their religion in absolute mental abstraction, 
tending to that perfection which shall fit them to be 
absorbed into that something which, as they say, faith can 
conceive, but words cannot describe. Secondly come those 
who, unable to mount to this intellectual yearning after 
purification from all human sentiments, strive by devotion 
to fit themselves for the heaven of the western Buddha, 
where transmigration shall cease, and they shall for all 
eternity sit upon a lotus-flower and gaze upon Buddha, 
drawing happiness from his presence. Thirdly follow the 
vulgar, whose devotion can rise no higher than the sensual 
ceremonies, who strike their foreheads upon the steps of the 
jtemples, who burn incense, offer candles made from the 



122 CHINA. 

tallow-tree, and save up their casli for festival days. So far 
as my experience goes, this class is confined almost entirely 
to old women ; and the priests say that their one unvarying 
aspiration is, that at their next transmigration they may 
become men. 

Such is Buddhism as we see it in China. But this is 
not all. A Chinese poet v/ho 800 years ago built an ugly 
straight dam in this beautiful lake of Selioo, about the 
same time invented the Ten Gods of Hell, and grafted them 
upon the Buddhist faith to terrify men from crime. There 
is also a reformed sect of Buddhists, who call themselves 
•' Do-Nothings," and who jolace the perfection of man in 
abstaining from all worship, all virtue, and all vice. When 
the Jesuit missionaries saw the mitres, the tonsure, the 
incense, the choir, and the statues of the Queen of Heaven, 
they exclaimed that the devil had been allowed to burlesque 
their religion. We Protestants may almost say the same. 
These reformed Buddhists deduce their origin from a teacher 
who was crucified in the province of Shantung some 600 
years ago, and they shock the missionaries by blasphemous 
parallels. I have heard that the present bishop of Victoria 
investigated this sect, and sent home an account of them, but 
for some reason, the statement was suppressed. 

Then we have the Taoists, or cultivators of perfect reason, 
which is another philosophy having its temples and its cere- 
monies. We have the worship of Heaven, which is the 
prerogative of the Emperor; and we have the State religion, 
the philosophy of Confucius, which is but metaphysics and 
ethics. 

All these may form good subject of discussion to labo- 
riously idle men, but they are of very little practical impor- 
tance. They are speculations, not superstitions. They are 
thought over — they are not felt. They inspire no fanaticism, 
they create no zeal, they make no martyrs, they generate 
no intolerance. They are not faiths that men will fight for, 
or die for, or even feel zealous for. Your Chinese doctor is 
a man of great subtlety, of great politeness, but of the coldest 
indifference. He is a most pachydermatous beast, so far as 
the zeal of the Christian missionary is concerned, " Do you 
believe in Jesus Christ?" asks the missionary after long 



A CHINAMAN HAS NO RELIGION. 123 

teaching, patiently heard. " Certainly I do," coldly answers 
the hearer. " But why do you believe ? are you convinced ? 
do you feel that what I have been saying is true ?" "I 
believe it because you say so," is the joolite and hopeless 
answer. 

It is this which makes the earnest missionary despond. A 
Chinaman has no superstition He has nothing that can be 
overthrown and leave a void. He will chin-chin his joss, burn 
crackers before he starts on a voyage, or light a candle for a 
partner or a useful clerk who may be in danger of death. 
But it's only hope of " good luck," or fear of " bad luck." 
The feeling is no deeper than that which in religious and 
enlightened England causes so many horseshoes to be nailed 
up to keep out witches, or which makes decent housewives, 
who can read and write, separate crossed knives, throw 
pinches of salt over their shoulder, and avoid walking under 
a ladder. 

Clustered upon this hill, within the walls of Hangchow, 
are temples of all these varied forms of paganism, and 
perhaps within the year the same idolater has bowed in all 
of them. Two lofty green mounds are perhaps too large for 
mere private tombs, and mark the spot of some public hero- 
worship ; but in other cases the architecture of the sacred 
and public edifices is all alike, and you cannot distinguish 
temples from custom-houses or mandarin offices. 

Chao-Hixg, August 15. 

Having made careful survey of the environs of Hangchow, 
we now determined to attack the city. 

With a retinue of twelve chair-bearers, and ten coolies 
who followed with our baggage, we left our boats during the 
mid-day heat, and skirting the border of the lake, reached the 
wall of the city. Here we shut ourselves up, and Mr. 
Edkius, profiting by former mishaps, instructed the party to 
avoid the Tartar part of the city and the Manchoo gate. 
It was an exciting moment when the first palanquin passed 
under the city gate. From behind my exaggerated fan I 
could see a fat Chinese official, who was evidently on duty, 
but who had his back turned to us. The rascal pretended 
he was quite unaware of our presence. I found out after- 



124 CHINA. • 

wards that lie knew that three Englishmen were passing in 
just as well as we did. I breathed more freely when the 
gate was passed, and when we became entangled in the 
narrow streets. They bore us through the dirtiest parts of 
the town, and passed the Yamun, or police-office, known by 
the horrible Imperial lion scrawled in paint upon the 
opposite wall. The jDeople soon began to run together. 
The blinds of the chair were sufficiently transparent to allow 
them to see there was something unusual ; perhaps the fact 
of the chairs being closed was enough in itself. Then we 
grew bolder and opened the blinds, and, although the crowd 
pressed to see, there was no hostile demonstration. At last, 
when we got to a better part of the city, we boldly descended, 
and found ourselves in the streets of Hangchow. We now 
bade one of the coolies guide us to the upper part of the 
city, while the chairs followed. We passed several curiosity 
shops, where there were some few things I should have 
bought, but, alas ! our expenses had so far exceeded our 
expectation that we were already afraid our funds would 
fall short — a contingency which actually occurred, for we 
had to borrow of a Chinese inn-keeper. I noticed that in 
one of the curiosity shops an English beerbottle was placed 
among the vases in a post of honour. As we ascended the 
hill, we passed a tea-house, which was the first I had seen in 
China having any pretensions to ornament. This was 
evidently the Very of Hangchou. A mandarin chair was 
following us, and we drew up to allow the gentleman to 
overtake us. In evident perturbation, he stopped his chair 
and went into one of the temples, where he doubtless ex- 
pended some cash in incense to be delivered from the 
barbarians. 

We were now among joss-houses and private residences 
which I had seen from the Pagoda-hill, and from the terrace 
we could see down into the courts and houses of the lower 
city. It was a holiday in Hangchow. There were shows 
going on. We had heard much firing in the morning, and 
we now learned that there had been a review of 8,000 troops, 
and our informants added v;ith much laughter that one of 
the evolutions had been to make the soldiers charge right 
into the river up to their armpits. In this part of Hang- 



WE E^'TER HANGCHOW. 125 

chow we were less thronged than I had ever been before in 
China. There was no apparent obstacle to our going where 
we pleased or doing what we pleased. We did not venture 
into the theatre, for we knew by experience, at a sing-song 
on the bank of the lake, that the Chinese ladies, with their 
smart robes, their painted faces — white and red upon their 
cheeks and vermilion on their lips, little enamelled stars 
beside their ej-es, and black upon their eyebrows — would 
almost jump out of their boxes with fright ; while the 
populace would throng about us, and the actors would stand 
still and stare like the rest. Being a little overcome by the 
sun, I strolled away by myself back to the tea-house, and 
took my place at a little table as complacently as I should 
on one of the boulevards ; the tea was exquisite, — that 
slightly-dried, small, green leaf which you never can taste iu 
England ; for tea will not keep or pack, or stand the voyage, 
unless burnt up to the state of insipidity in which we get it. 
A poet emperor of China, Khian-Loung, has not disdained 
to sing the praises of tea, and, like a practical Chinaman, he 
teaches us how to make it : — 

*' Graceful are the leaves of raei-hoa, sweetly scented and clear are 
the leaves of fo-cheou. But place upon a gentle fire the tripod whose 
colour and form tell of a far antiquity, and fill it with water of molten 
snow. Let it seethe till it would be hot enough to whiten fish or to 
redden a crab. Then pour it into a cup made from the earth of yue,. 
upon the tender leaves of a selected tea-tree. Let it rest till the mists 
which freely rise have formed themselves into thicker clouds, and until 
these have gradually ceased to weigh upon the surface, and at last float 
away in vapour. Then sip deliberately the delicious liquor. It will 
drive away all the five causes of disquietude which come to trouble us. 
You may taste, and you may feel ; but never can you express in words 
or song that sweet tranquillity we draw from the essence thus 
prepared." 

I sipped and was refreshed ; but the sweet tranquillity 
was not mine. The curious tea-drinkers pressed around me, 
and there was a waiter whose nature it was to walk about 
with a kettle of boiling water, and whose unconquerable 
instinct compelled him to fill up my cup whenever it was 
getting three degrees below boiling point, and was becoming 
possible to drink. The people were very good-tempered, 
but they came very close, and the day was very hot. I was 



126 CHINA. 

SO strict in my Cliinese costume that they conld find nothing- 
to wonder at but my physique and my pith hat. They 
made the most of these. If I had been dressed in European 
costume, I believe they would have undressed me in their 
ardent curiosity. 

Meantime our coolies and luggage had been stopped at the 
gate we passed through. The officials told my man that we 
had acted wrong in not presenting our cards and the Footei's 
pass ; however it was not their business, but that of another 
officer, to stop foreigners. They did not wish to stop English- 
men's luggage, but looked into the servants' boxes. They 
asked where the Englishmen were gone, and were satisfied 
when told that we had gone up the hill " to chin-chin joss." 
All this talk about cards and passes was, of course, Chinese 
tarradiddles, but it shows that the Chinese authorities were 
perfectly aware that they had three Englishmen among 
them. 

I could find no silk weaving in the city, but there must 
be quarters like the suburbs of Lyons, for this is the very 
centre and depot of the silk district. 

After several hours in Hangchow we got into our chairs 
again, and passed through the opposite gate of the city along 
a dirty faubourg and over a fiat to the Tsein-tang river, 
which is here about two miles wide. There is a little 
custom-house, but no ships and no commerce. Hangchow 
evidently depends upon its inland trade, and seeks no com- 
munication by sea. As we crossed the broad river I looked 
back upon this picturesque city, and felt that its environs were 
as familiar as those of Liverpool, Cheltenham, or Richmond. 

We had five days' journey yet before us, the greater 
part through country even less visited than Hangchow itself. 
I should grow intolerable, however, were I to describe the 
rest of the route with the same minuteness. I must not 
even venture to describe the sepulchre of Yu, the founder 
of the Hia dynasty, although it is the grandest sepulchral 
temple in China, and boasts an antiquity of 2,000 years — 
and although a fierce thunderstorm burst so close that there 
was a smell of fire, and the gigantic idol trembled. Perhaps 
I may be permitted, however, to say that nearly 100 lineal 
descendants of the great emperor who controlled the great 



THE CITIES OF THE INTERIOR. 12T 

inundations and curbed the waters of the four great rivers, 
still live in poverty under the protection of the temple. 
Under the 5ling dynasty they received pensions ; the 
Tartars allow them none. Here is a pedigree, ye followers 
of Rollo. Enough to say of Peh-Kwan that the people 
asked us whether we were Siamese. They had seen the 
Loochooians, and we were not like them, and they knew we 
were not Japanese. Chao-hing is for many miles round girt 
with sepulchral monuments. It is to the worship of ances- 
tors what Hangchow and its lakes are to Buddha. All the 
wharves and bridges were crowded by all the population of 
the place as we went through. The half-naked bodies seemed 
countless as we moved slowly through canals, exactly — 
bridges, smells, and all — like some of the back canals in 
"Venice. We passed several nights among the most uncul- 
tivated crowds of boatmen, while awaiting our turn to be 
dragged by windlasses over those dikes of slippery mud 
vrhich in China do duty for locks. We spent other nights 
in passing through lakes and listening to the songs and 
cymbals which told of marriages in the villages on their banks. 
We watched the paddy harvest, examined the tallow-trees, 
with their poplar-like leaf, their green berries, and their 
alder-shaped form. We saw the cotton come into iiower. 
We fired in vain at two eagles circling round the head of a 
man who was accompanied by a little dog, which they wanted 
to carry off. We stopped and interrogated a sort of Chinese 
Gil Bias, who was travelling on foot (almost an unpre- 
cedented thing in China), and who carried with him all his 
worldly goods — a pair of blue breeches, a pipe, and a small 
teapot. We investigated at Yu-Yoa the country from the 
top of the Citadel-hill, and in the dyer's shop we examined 
the dye wherewith those ever-present blue breeches are 
dyed. After ten days of sight-seeing, everything seemed to 
repeat itself and to revolve like the events of the Platonic 
year. We became convinced at last that if we were to 
journey from Hangchow to Pekin, and from Pekin to 
Szchuen, we should find just the same arts and manners and 
agricultm^e, varied only by the exigencies of nature. 

On the 10th of August we arrived at ISTingpo, after some dis- 
comfort and some necessity for strong doses of c[uinine,but after 



128 CHINA. 

mucli excitement and great enjoyment. We have passed 400 
miles of country not often before traversed. We have entered 
four first-class Chinese cities (two of them unknown to European. 
travellers), many second-class cities which in other countries 
might be classed as first, and innumerable towns and villages. 
Throughout the wdiole of our journey we have received from 
no Chinese an uncivil word or insulting gesture. No mis- 
chievous urchin has thrown stones down upon us from any 
one of the hundreds of bridges we passed through. No one 
stopped us, and no one waylaid us. It is true that the 
mandarins at Peh-Kwan sent us a message to appear at their 
yamun ; but when we sent answer that we would endeavour 
to make preparation to receive their visit on board our 
boats, and when Mr. Edkins had sent them a Testament, 
they took the evasive answer in good part, and sufiered our 
boatmen to proceed. 

From this journey I draw two practical conclusions. 

The first is, that the authorities in China are exceedingly 
; anxious in no way to complicate their present disputes with 
England, and, holding in very wholesome terror the English 
name, are inclined to shut their eyes to the presence of 
peaceably conducted foreigners. 

The second is that, unless excited by the authorities, as 
they have been at Canton — and as they might have been 
here, for had the mandarins chosen to say we were Portu- 
guese, we should certainly have had our throats cut — the 
Chinese people have no objection whatever to the presence 
of foreigners in their cities. 

Whenever, therefore, the provisions of a new treaty shall 
open all China to every European provided with a passport 
from his own consul, there will be no difficulty in the Eng- 
lish merchant carrying his own goods up the rivers and 
canals and into the great cities of China. 

The people will be glad enough to trade with him, and 
the authorities can, if they will, protect him. 



129 



CHAPTER XIII. 



THE 27INGPO MASSACKE. 



Commercial Character of Ningpo — Piracy — Massacre of the Portu- 
guese Pirates by Cantonese Pirates — Political Occuri-ences. 

Ningpo, Aug. 24. 
This great city, with its 350,000 inhabitants, its beautiful 
river, and its excellent water-connection with the interior, 
is the least vakiable of all our commercial stations. Neither 
tea nor silk is brought down in any quantities, and the little 
tea that is prepared here is sent to Shanghai to be shipped. 
The importation- of British and Straits' produce was last year 
but £136,359. 9s., and not two-thirds of this was British 
manufactures. The greater security of European shipping, 
and its comparative immunity from the pirates outside (whom 
I saw the other day send a whole fleet of j unks back into 
the river), have given it some importance as a shipping-port 
for Amoy, Formosa, Swatow, and the Straits. In 1856, 198 
British ships, with an aggregate of 25,506 tons, loaded here. 
This carrying trade is likely to increase, for the Chinese are 
becoming quite alive to the advantage of a stout ship and 
an English flag. "Can insure?" is a cj[uestion now very 
often in a Chinaman's mouth, and Chinamen are rich at 
Ningpo. 

Ningpo is still in the after-throb of great excitement. 
The European settlement is on the side of the river opposite 
to the walled city. The hongs are not numerous nor very 
large, and they are mixed up with Chinese residences and 
large timber yards (timber is the staple of Ningpo) ; and 
they form a rectangle, the area behind which is occupied by 
graves and paddy-fields, but chiefly by graves. 

On the 26th of June a naval battle was fought in the 
river, and a massacre took place among the tombs. 

The story is somewhat out of date, but I must deal with 



130 CHINA. 

it here, wliere alone I conld do so upon a proper knowledge 
of the facts, because it is illustrative of the state of affairs 
we have to deal with in Cliina. To understand this trans- 
action we must recollect, what it is so difficult for people in 
England to believe, that the whole coast of China is so 
infested with pirates that even a fleet of fishing-boats cannot 
venture out without armed vessels as a convoy. 

The lishing-boats which ply off the mouth of the river 
Yung pay convoy duties to the extent of 50,000 dollars a 
year ; and the wood-junks that ply between j^ingpo and 
Foochow, and the other native craft, raise the annual pay- 
ment for protection to 200,000 dollars (£70,000) annually. 
These figures are startling, but I have taken pains to ascer- 
tain their correctness. 

The vessels employed in this convoy service were Portu- 
guese lorchas. These vessels were well armed and equipped. 
There Vv^ere no mandarin junks and no Portuguese ships of 
war to cope with them or control them, and they became 
masters of this part of the coast. It is in the nature of 
things that these privateers should abuse their power. They 
are accused of the most frightful atrocities. It is alleged 
that they made descents upon villages, carried off' the women, 
murdered the men, and burnt the habitations. They be- 
came infinitely greater scourges than the pirates they were 
paid to repel. It is alleged, also, that complaints to the 
Portuguese consul were vain ; that Portuguese sailors taken 
red-handed and handed over to this consul were suffered to 
escape from the consular prison. Pightly or wrongly, the 
Chinese thought that the consul was in complicity with the 
ruffians who were acting both as convoy and as pirates. The 
convictions of the English and French residents at Ningpo 
do not differ from those of the Chinese ; and although, 
having no means of guarding my inquiries with the securities 
of a judicial investigation, 1 am unwilling to make any 
strong assertion, I think I i^^ay reasonably say that the 
honour of the Government of Portugal is so compromised 
that European nations, for common character's sake, should 
require it to institute a searching examination into the con- 
duct of this official. 

The leader of the pirate fleet was — I am going back now 



a'pak, the piratical mandahix. 131 

to a time three years ago — a Cantonese named A'Pak. Tlie 
authorities at Mngpo, in their weakness, determined to 
make terms with him^ rather than submit to the tyranny of 
the Portuguese. 

A'Pak was made a mandarin of the third class ; and his 
fleet — not altogether taken into Government pay, for that 
the Chinese could not afford — was nominally made over to 
A'Pa,k's brother, a gentleman with a long name, winch I 
cannot remember. 

This fleet, now turned nominally honest, began to compete 
with the Portuguese for the convoy business, and, their 
business being now tolerably respectable, they were joined 
by several English, American, and French deserters from 
ships-of-war and merchant vessels. 

This has been the position of the two parties for the last 
three years. 

The fishermen and carrying junks, glad to be rid of the 
Portuguese yoke, gradually transferred their custom to the 
Cantonese fleet, and the Portuguese, hungry and furious, 
became more active in their piracies, and attacked the Can- 
tonese ships when they could get them at an advantage, and 
murdered their crews with ch'cumstances of great atrocity. 

The Cantonese do not look upon the Portuguese as 
Europeans. They have not the same fear of them. They 
can fight them m.an to man. Macao would have been 
taken by the Chinese long since, had they not dreaded the 
interference of the other Western powers. After a few 
of these very sanguinary provocations, A'Pak — not, it is 
believed, without the concurrence of the Toutai of Ningpo 
— determined to destroy this Portuguese convoy fleet. 

Por this purpose A'Pak's brother collected his snake-boats 
and convoy junks from along the whole coast, and assembled 
about tv/enty of them, and perhaps 500 men. The Portu- 
guese vi^ere not long hearing of these preparations, but they 
seem to have been struck with panic. Some of their vessels 
went south, some were taken at the mouth of the river. 
Seven lorchas took refuge up the river, opposite the Portu- 
guese consulate. The sailors on board these lorchas landed 
some of their big guns, and put the consulate in a state of 
defence, and perhaps hoped that the neighbourhood of the 

K 2 



132 CHINA. 

European houses and the character of the consulate would 
prevent an attack. Not so. On the day I have above 
mentioned the Canton fleet came up the river. The Portu- 
guese consul immediately fled. The lorchas fired one broad- 
side at them as they approached, and then the crews deserted 
their vessels, and made for the shore. About 200 Cantonese, 
accompanied by a few Europeans, followed these 140 Portu- 
guese and Manilla-men ashore. A fight took place in the 
streets. It was of very short duration, for the Portuguese 
behaved in the most dastardly manner. The Manilla-men 
showed some spirit, but the Portuguese could not even 
persuade themselves to fight for their lives behind the walls 
of their consulate. The fortified house was taken and 
sacked by these Chinameu, the Portuguese were pursued 
amoDg the tombs, where they sought refuge, and forty of 
them were shot down, or hunted and butchered with spears. 

The Capricieuse, French frigate, now came up the river, 
fired upon the Cantonese who were sacking the consul's 
house, and put an end to the conflict. The French captain 
received on board the Portuguese consul, not, I am told, 
with great cordiality, and also the fugitives who had escaped 
the massacre. The latter he conveyed as prisoners to Macao, 
to be tried as pirates. 

Merciless as this massacre was, and little as is the choice 
between the two sets of combatants, it must be owned that 
the Cantonese acted with purpose and discipline. Three 
trading Portuguese lorchas which lay in the river with their 
flags flying were not molested ; and no European, not a 
Portuguese, was even insulted by the infuriated butchers. 
The stories current of Souero and his Portuguese followers 
rivalled the worst of the tales of the buccaneers, and public 
opinion in Ningpo and the foreign settlement was strongly 
in favour of the Cantonese. 

The Chinamen lost only two Chinese. One vagabond 
Englishman fighting on their side was shot by a Manilla- 
man. 

After the departure of the Capricieuse, the Portuguese 
brig of war, the Mondego, came up the river, accompanied 
by about twelve Portuguese lorchas, and made formal 
demands of the Toutai, that the captured lorchas should be 



UNIVERSAL ''SQUEEZES." 133 

restored and otlier restitution made. The Toutai replied 
that the two convoy fleets must settle their own quarrels, 
for he had nothing to do with them. The Portuguese and 
the Cantonese then made ready for a fight, and the general 
opinion was that the Cantonese would have again been 
victorious. Meanwhile, however. Commander Dew, in the 
Nimrod, had steamed up the river. He sent a message to 
the Portuguese commander to say that his instructions were 
to remain entirely neutral, and if the brig was about to 
attack, he would move his ship out of the line of fire; but 
that if the Nimrocl or the houses of British residents on the 
river were struck by shot, it would be his duty to interfere. 
The Mondego and her consort lorchas immediately departed 
for Shanghai. The Canton fleet is still either engaged in 
convoying or at anchor in the river ; and, to the great 
comfort of the merchants and the missionaries, so also is the 
Nimrod. 

I do not for a moment seek to implicate the Portuguese 
nation in the crimes of the Macao ruffians, except so far that 
it was the duty of Portugal to prevent such deeds. But 
these circumstances suggest serious considerations in con- 
nection with our next treaty with China. They show how 
important and how difficult is the question of policing the 
coast and exterminating piracy ; they show also how im- 
portant it is that the great European powers should exercise 
a strong control over such lawless vagabonds as those who 
acted with the Cantonese ; they also suggest very grave con- 
siderations as to how far it may be right to extend to small 
and not very conscientious Governments like that of Portugal 
the treaty privileges which England is about to ask, not only 
for herself, but for all other civilized nations. 

A circumstance has just occurred which still further 
illustrates the great impolicy of allowing European vagabonds 
to be uncontrolled in this country. " Squeezing" has become 
so intolera,ble in this province, that a large city not forty 
miles distant is in rebellion. Every power in China 
'• squeezes." The Toutai sends forth to " squeeze," the 
Canton fleet sends out to " squeeze," and squeezing parties 
are undertaken upon private account. 

A few days since, an Irishman, accompanied by some 



134 CHINA. 

Chinese, went into tlie interior (to one of tlie villages where I 
had passed the previous night) upon, it is alleged, a squeezing 
expedition. While there, he accidentally shot one of his 
Chinese companions. Delighted with this opportunity of 
" getting the law on their side," the populace rose, seized the 
Irishman, bound him as though he had been a wild beast 
which no thongs could make ha.rmless, and sent him up — 
after severe debate among themselves whether they should 
not behead him on the spot — to the Toutai of Ningpo. He 
arrived here in a terribly macerated condition, and claimed 
the protection of the British consul. Doubtless it became 
the consul's duty to grant this protection, and the man is 
now in Dr. Parker's hospital. Small advantage, however, 
will be derived by any British merchant from any treaty 
which may "open up China," if China is to be opened up 
to European brigands. There must be some arrangement 
among the European powers upon this matter. 



CHAPTEB XIY. 

CHUSAN. 

Voyage from Mingpo to Cbusan — The Elver Yung — A Night in a 
Joss-house — Chinghai — Chusan Harbour — No Guds in the Batteries 
— Aspect of the Island — May be Ee-occupied without Eeslstance — 
A Typhoon. 

Chusan Hakbour, Septemler 9. 

On the 6th of September, in a boat with two ears and two 
eyes, a foresail and mainsail kept taut by bamboo sticks 
worked into them, and a comfortable cabin, built as a 
hurricane-house, and occupying nearly all her length, I 
started, with a strong adverse wind, for Chusan. The Rosina 
is partly used as a passage-boat, partly to carry information, 
but chiefly to carry " drug " — the commercial name for 
opium. She belongs to an eminent commercial house, is 
navigated by one European and a Chinese crew, has good 
store of Minie rifles always fit for service, is a good sea-boat, 



THE BANKS OF THE YUNG. 135 

a fast sailer, and the type of a numerous class. Everybody 
of any importance has one of these Ningpo boats. 

It would take more space than I dare occupy to describe 
the ten miles of the river Yung. The simple, yet effective 
ice-houses, and the no less simply constructed salt-stores, 
■which occupy the right bank ; the wood-junks, each in its 
separate mud dock (so closely packed that there is not room 
for another), which line the left bank ; tho " frovv'ning " 
batteries which are built at the end of every reach — all 
deserve description. I can only pause, however, to say a 
word about the batteries. They are built of stone, and some 
of them have very powerful guns, but the wonder is that 
their armament has not long ago been stolen by the pirates 
and convoy lorchas. I have visited them all in difierent 
excursions down the river. There is no guard-house, no 
magazine, no sponge rammer or v/orm ; the iron guns and 
the stone walls make up the battery. A naval officer v^ho 
accompanied me in one of my w^anderings was positively 
distressed at the forlorn condition of an English-cast 32- 
pounder thirteen feet long, and weighing four tons, so 
mounted that a charge of a pound of pov/der would have 
thrown it from its rotten ca,rriage. I believe he would have 
provided the poor gun with a decent carriage at his own 
expense, even if he knew that he must meet its fire next 
day, so indignant was he that a good gun should be so shame- 
fully treated. 

At the mouth of the Yung v^e come to the city of 
Ghinghai, with its enormous fleet of junks which crowd the 
river, and its extensive artificial sea-beach of hewn granite. 
Here are those extraordinary natural fortifications which 
the Chinese attempted to utilize in the last v/ar, and this 
was the scene of the most tremendous slaughter that occurred. 

The mouth of the Yung is beset by rocky islets and 
sunken shoals, vv^hich make the approach difficult and the 
channels intricate. Each shore is commanded by a high 
conical hill. That on the left is surmounted by a stone 
tower j that on the right by a fort and a joss-house. On a 
former occasion I passed a night and two days in that pagan 
temple. I slept, wrapped in my cloak, at the feet of a 
terrible Indian god. All night long the abbot in his mitre 



136 CHINA. 

sat upon liis tliroue lurDing his back upon a gigantic idol of 
" the Queen of Heaven/' and his priests sat round the table 
before him. A thousand little dishes, each containing some 
article of vegetable food curiously cooked, preserved, or made 
into sweetmeats, covered not only the table, but also many tem- 
j)orary scaffoldings erected for the purpose throughout the 
temple. It was a great ceremony, with a highly emblematical 
ritual. The prayer was, evidently, for a favourable harvest, 
for every fruit \vas taken up and blessed and chanted over. 
The picturesque scene, the monotonous mutterings, and per- 
haps also the musquitoes, kept me awake till past midnight. 
When I awoke in the morning the sun was invading my 
corridor, and priests, and food, and scaffoldings and tables 
had all vanished. But the old Indian god scowled upon us 
as ridiculously fierce as ever. Alas ! his divine scowl had 
not scared awa}'- the musquitoes. 

From the embrasures on the top of this joss-house fort I 
could look down upon the scene of that terrible carnage, 
when, in the last war, the Chinese army of ten thousand 
men were routed in ten minutes, — when the flying multitude 
was arrested by a line of bayonets, and when, before the 
slaughter could be stayed, one-half the number either perished 
by the steel or were forced into the broad river. This 
lesson, repeated at Ningpo, and again on the hills beyond, 
has never been forgotten. 

In the joss-house fort there is one gun, mounted, probabl}^, 
as an alarm-gun. There is another sunk half-way in the 
earth, with a British spike in it. These are the defences of 
the mouth of the Yung. 

At four o'clock in the morning we were tacking through 
the islands ; at ten Tre cast anchor in the harbour of Cbusan. 
We are accustomed in England to think of Cliusan as a fine, 
large island, open to the Cliinese seas, where you may see the 
sun, with purple-coloured face, lift up his head from the 
distant waters. So upon its eastern side it probably is ; 
not so as we are in the habit of approaching it. The harbour 
of Tinghai is a land-locked strait about three-quarters of a 
mile across — not unlike the Menai in some places. You 
might be in a moderate-sized river; you have come in 
through a labyrinth of narrow channels, and you see no 



CHUSAN IS A BEAUTIFUL ISLAND. 137 

evidence of an open sea. Many a city upon a Chinese river 
looks more like a seaport than this famous port and harbour 
of Tinghai. 

Nothing can be more picturesque to look upon than the 
mountains and valleys of this fair island, vv^hich now occupies 
all scope of view upon our left. Gradual elevations, clothed 
with small hamlets and many-coloured vegetation, swell from 
the strait, affording charming sites for barracks and hospitals 
and head-quarter houses. Away behind, the interior hills 
rise into peaks on which the clouds are resting. Narrow 
gorges and deep valleys run far up inland, offering shady 
retreats in hot summer months and fertile fields in every 
season. 

The least pleasant is the flat on which the city stands. 
Opposite to the spot where we cast anchor the hills retire 
from the strait and form an amphitheatre. The interval 
between their base and the water is a semicircle. Let the 
hills represent the arc of a strung bow and the strait repre- 
sent the string. • The area between is the swampy marsh 
upon which the city of Tinghai stands, surrounded by paddy- 
fields and moist grounds. Just at that point of the string 
where the archer would fix the notch of his arrow, there is a 
hill, which nature seems to have placed there to command 
and protect the strait. 

Such is the natural site of the land at the port of Chusan. 
Alons^ the shore of the strait, to the full extent of the string; 
of our bow, runs a green embankment. You would think 
it a dam thrown up as a protection against high tides, but 
that at regular intervals embrasures are left. The hill which 
stands in the centre of the chord of our arc has been fortified 
with wails and parapets of stone masonry ; and it is still 
surmounted by that same joss-house which seventeen years 
ago obtained for it the name of Joss-house Hill. There are 
stone batteries also upon several of the islets ; all the narrow 
channels are thus commanded, and there is a large battery 
far up the valley. 

Except that the harbour contains, instead of a mandarin 
fleet, some sixty small trading-junks, the place must now 
look much as it did when our fleet first sailed in ; when the 
Chinese admiral so feelingly expostulated with us upon the 



138 CHINA. 

injustice of revenging insults put upon us by the Cantonese, 
by slaughtering the defenders of those weak intrenchments ; 
when the old man, with a dignity and courage worthy of a 
better fate, acknowledged that our power was too great to 
allow him to hope for success, but, declaring that his orders 
and his duty enjoined him to die at his post, went smiling 
down the side of our flagship, resigned to meet the doom 
which too surely awaited him in its most painful form on the 
morrow. 

If I recall the memory of these painful scenes, it is to pro- 
test against their recurrence. If these places are to be again 
occupied, let it be done suddenly, before any peremptory 
orders for a desperate defence can 'arrive from Pekin. JSTot 
that Tiughai is, under proper conditions, incapable of 
defence. Garrisoned by English troops, it is difficult 
to conceive a place more impregnable. Approached by 
narrow rock-bound channels, covered by commanding 
heights, and having its own citadel-hill, it is formed 
for a place of strength ; but the Chinese at Chusan 
seem to have learnt only one lesson from the last war — 
the inutility of all defences. Yes ; I think they have 
learnt one other lesson ; it is that British dollars follow 
hard upon British bayonets. I landed and walked along 
the embankment ; there was not a gun. I climbed the 
Joss-house Hill. The masses of masonry that look so im- 
posing from below are all loose blocks which a shot would 
topple over ; still no gun. In the joss-house was an old 
priest muttering and beating his little drum, another smok- 
ing his pipe, and a third asleep. A half-starved dog seemed 
perishing under the same vice of idleness which pervades 
the place. His diet in a Buddhist temple could not be very 
succulent, and his skin was Avorn raw from lying all day 
long upon the stone floor. Sloth had eaten into his bones. 
Two or three Chinamen, sailors from the junks, were vent- 
ing their " Ey yaw," as they examined the re])resentations 
of the punishments of the Bhuddist hell. Not without 
reason, for the joss-house of Tinghai is richer than any 
temple I have seen in ingenious tortures. The kings of 
hell sit in judgment like Chinese mandarins. The execu- 
tioners are braying the victims in mortars, boiling them in 



EFFIGIES OP A BHUDDIST HELL. 139 

furnaces, skinning tliem v*'itli knives, throwing them to 
tigers, squeezing them between boards, cutting them up 
and hanging the bits on hooks, beating them with mallets, 
tormenting them with hot irons, all represented in coloured 
plaster groups v/ith a horrible fidelity of detail, and with an 
ingenuity of conception as to the instruments employed 
which would argue that the Buddhist priests are no con- 
temptible mechanics, and that it is well for the barbarians 
they are not employed in the invention of v/ariike tormen- 
taria. 

No one, not even the dog, took any notice of me. I 
looked from the top of the hill down into the city of 
Tinghai — into the suburb which extends from it up to the 
water-side — upon the pagoda and the Artillery Hill — and 
upon the English tombs which cover the descent of the hill 
upon which I was standing. Everythmg was swamp and 
paddy. Everything had the same listless, unprepared, care- 
abandoned air. There was not a gun visible from the spot, 
not a muzzle lurking behind any one of the hundreds of 
embrasures which I could count around. A few junks 
were working up the canal or river which runs from the 
harbour up to the city, and some others were unloading 
joss-house furniture upon the wharf below me. I had heard 
men of the last war talk of gravel walks and parade-grounds, 
European houses and drained spaces. No vestige of any 
such innovation remains. All is gone back to Chinese 
notions of propriety — squalid houses for Chinamen to herd 
in, paddy-crops for Chinamen to eat. These paddy-fields 
were now full of v^ater j the city also was slighty flooded. 
The Chinamen seemed to have clustered like flies upon the 
only foul spot in this beautiful island. 

I walked down into the English burial-ground. The 
inscriptions have been torn away from the square tomb, 
and the obelisk has been broken. The Chinese have 
crowded the place with the coflins of their own dead. A 
fellow who was working there at this " pigeon " addressed 
me in the jargon they use for English, and told me there 
had been an insurrection in the city tv/o days before. The 
" soldiers " had assembled from their shops and had beaten 
the mandarin almost to death because he had paid them 



140 CHINA. 

tlieir pay in the new depreciated casli. He ended by a 
patriotic wish that we English would come and take the 
island again. His English acquirements showed that he 
had found his account in the last occupation. 

If it be our policy to retake Chusan, it may be done with- 
out the expenditure of a shot or a life, provided it be done 
promptly. I know not where else we can find a basis for 
naval operations upon the coast. If w^e have to police the 
Chinese coast, or to hold power in the great inland waters, 
we must have a large naval depot, and that can be no other 
than the harbour of Tinghai. It will, however, be a naval 
depot and no more. Not only past experience, but also all 
a priori reasoning shows that Chusan can never become a 
place of great commerce. 

I had seen enough — enough, at least, for one day. It 
was raining a drizzling rain and blowing hard. I was 
racked with rheumatism, and tortured by that horrid pes- 
tilence v/hich no one can escape, for they are the blossoms 
of this flowery land — an eruption of boils. I sent into the 
city for coolies and a chair, to penetrate a little into the 
interior on the morrow, and I returned on board. 

The Rosina lay just abreast of a long, low building of 
European, or rather of Anglo-Indian, build — eleven windows 
and a verandah. Part of it is now used as a custom-house, 
and the rest is dirt and desolation. This was the British 
hospital. The man who chose that site is guilty of many of 
the deaths recorded in that graveyard, and also of many of 
those upon the Cameronian Hill. There are hills and valleys 
close around where at small labour you might make a little 
Eden. If you must be near the dirty town and the Chinese 
samshoo — which, of all Chinese inventions, is the most 
deadly to the English soldier — there is the joss-house hill. 
The British hospital is placed on a level v/ith the swami:>, in 
full reek of the paddy-fields, within the circuit of the stench 
of that filthy suburb, and in a spot where samshoo can be 
conveniently handed in through every window ; yet we 
wonder in England that Chusan was found unhealthy ! 

I had full opportunity of contemplating this place. No 
sooner had I got on board than the breeze became a gale, 
and the misty rain a driving storm. Then rose the tempest 



A TYPHOON. 141 

— a tempest sncli as the China seas only can show. It 
lasted all night, and the next day, and the next. During a 
momentary pause vse saw through one of the narrow islet 
channels a large screw-steamer carrying her funnel abaft 
her mainmast, struggling down under the mainland. Some 
one has since said it was the Durance, French transport, 
and that she grounded at the height of the Typhoon. The 
" Shanghai Shipping List " afterwards repeated this latter 
report. It may be so, but I doubt it. I believe it was the 
same steamer I saw two days later in company with the 
Ccqyricieuse frigate off Lookong. She might be the Durance ; 
but we did not make her out to be aground, or any other- 
wise in " durance vile." Whatever she was, however, she 
passed like a spirit on this hurricane. Outside, the typhoon 
was sweeping the seas and ravaging the coasts. It drove 
the light ship at the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang from her 
moorings, it strewed the junks about in pieces of floating 
wreck, it broke down walls, it. cast away a three-masted 
English ship, and lifted a schooner over the sand of the 
south bank and deposited her in the paddy-fields. It 
dammed up the waters of Wang-poo and the Yung ; and 
here, in this bay of Chusan, it put junks adrift and bands of 
wreckers upon the alert. The llosina had ground-tackle 
made for such emergencies. She drifted at first, but her 
second anchor brought her up. We were fortunately in 
the best harbour on the coast of China. After this expe- 
rience I have a right to speak well of the harbour of 
Chusan. 

On the night of the third day we sailed forth with a 
moderate wind and a bright moonlight. 



U2 



CHAPTER XY. 

DIPLOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 

Arrival of Count Putiatin, the Russian Ambassador — Attitude of 
Russia towards China — Reports from the Interior of Canton City — 
defenceless State of the City of Ningpo — System of Purchase in 
the Army invented by the Chinese — English and French Ambas- 
sadors expected at Shanghai — The Pekin Gazette adopts Yeh's 
Policy towards Foreigners at Shanghai. 

Shanghai, Scptemher 15. 
The Russians liave played the first card in the game which 
is now to come off in the north. On the 2nd inst. Count 
Putiatin, vice-admiral, aide-de-camp, general, governor of 
Amoor, minister plenipotentiary and ambassador extraordi- 
nary from his Imperial Majesty the emperor of Russia to 
the court of Pekin, landed in plain costume and from a 
little boat, accompanied by a suite as unpretending as their 
principal. He had left his steamer at Woosung to coal, and 
took up his residence with the American house of Russell 
and Co. The only visits he paid, except return visits of 
ceremony, were to Mr. Beale, an old friend, whose guest he 
had been when stationed here before the war, and to Mr. 
Heard, the head of another of the principal American 
houses at this port. From these little facts some people 
draw conclusions as to a probable coincidence of Russian 
and American counsels in the forthcoming negotiations. 

Count Putiatin left Petersburg in April, travelled over- 
land in seventy days to the Amoor, where he found the 
America, a paddle-wheel war-steamer, built in America 
during the war, and sent round the Horn and across the 
Pacific by our kind cousins. The count steamed down to 
the mouth of the Peiho, and, after delays and much diffi- 
culty, succeeded in despatching an announcement of his 
mission to Pekin. Having occupied the necessary interval 
very agreeably in Shanghai, he is now gone north again fco 



RUSSIA TREADS CAUTIOUSLY. 143 

seek an answer to his despatcli. The America left Woosung 
just before the Typhoon, and was seen standing northward 
making very heavy weather. The admiral has no force 
with him, and his embassy is evidently of an entirely pacific 
character. 

It seems to be thought here that the objects of the 
Russians extend no further than to convert their college 
at Pekin into a diplomatic establishment, and to obtain a 
]Darticipation in the privileges granted to nations "hereto- 
fore trading to Canton." With an ambassador at Pekin 
they can work out the rest at their leisure. Meanwhile the 
odium of all coercive measures is to be thrown upon the 
English and the French. 

We shall see presently how this will work. The count 
will either go to Pekin, or he will be back here before the 
next mail leaves. If Pussia gains time by this quick isolated 
step, she also incurs risks. From the treatment she receives 
w^e may surely learn something that may be useful to us. 

The v/eather has broken up, and we are suffering that 
succession of gales wdiicli marks the change from the south- 
west to the north-east monsoon. Steamers, therefore, will 
come slowly and at much expenditure of coal from Hong- 
kong hither ; and sailing ships, if these encumbrances are to 
come, must be towed. After the north-east monsoon has 
settled into its steady course, there are, however, usually 
some weeks of fine weather, and we may still hope that 
something will yet be done. I believe the Pekin winter to 
be a bugbear. Lord Macartney did not leave Tartary for 
Pekin till the 21st of September, nor Pekin till the 8th of 
October. He traversed the whole of China to Canton 
between the 8th of October and the 18th of December. 

We have heard nothing here either of the French ambas- 
sador or of Lord Elgin. But this is not despiriting, as, 
according to former computations, they are not due at 
Shanghai till the last week in September. Perhaps this 
mail, as it passes Hongkong and Singapore, may gather 
some tidings of them both. 

The French shov/ signs of movement. As I came here 
from Ningpo, we had opportunities of seeing the coast. My 
little sailing-boat sped from point to point during the 



144 CHINA. 

intervals of liglit sides and moderate weather ; and then, 
when night or the gale grew heavy, flew with half-closed 
wings before the howling blast, and nestled in some winding 
inland creek known only to experienced opium-runners, or 
the native fishermen or pirates. During these devious fits 
of progress we saw the Gapricieuse French frigate trying to 
make way northwards, and a large steam-transport, which 
we thought to be Russian, but which turned out to be also 
French, lying at anchor under a sheltering headland. 

This is all the news Shanghai affords. The Russian 
officers have, indeed, been most provokingly candid and 
circumstantial as to their means of defence at Castres Bay 
and Petropaulovski, and as to their escapes. It would be 
easy to make an amusing letter out of these revelations. 
But cui bono ? Let these unpleasant topics cease. Some 
Horace Walpole is no doubt telling the next age all about it. 

In a former letter I told you that I had established a 
little channel of communication with Mr. Commissioner 
Yell's back parlour in Canton. Unfortunately, the difiicul- 
ties of transmission, translation, and testing make the under- 
ground way very tortuous. I send you some reports, 
however, which I think you will find interesting. Subse- 
quent events have shown that I might have relied upon my 
informant's first despatch more than I felt justified at the 
time in doing. The proceedings respecting the overtures 
made by the Americans are, we now know, at least founded 
on fact. The blockade which was, of course, at once insti- 
tuted by the admiral when the scheme reached his ears, put 
a stop to its execution. In a printed publication, having 
something of the character of a newspaper, which is in 
circulation at Canton, it was stated three weeks ago that 
negotiations for ])esice, together with resumption of trade, 
have been delayed in consequence of the English " head 
man " having been compelled to leave for Calcutta to take 
part in the fighting that is going on there, and the settle- 
ment of these questions is accordingly for the time postponed 
until the American commissioner '' Forbes" (!) can come 
down from Shanghai. 

If it be true, as my informant states, that Yeh has re- 
moved all prohibitions on trade, you will probably hear of 



EEPORTS FEOM MY CANTON SPY. 145 

a brisk traffic being done at Macao in tlie teas, kc, that 
we know were shut up in Canton or its vicinity, as much 
of this and other produce can reach Macao from the west 
without risk, so long as the port and river of Canton are 
the only points blockaded. 

The most important, however, is w^hat is said of the 
advance of the rebels towards Canton. Shaouhing is scarcely 
ninety miles west of Canton, the river leads direct from one 
place to the other, and there is no point between the two 
at which the passage of a force could be disputed. Our 
best hope that the rebels will not traverse those ninety 
miles must be that they know they will find only famine at 
their journey's end. 

[Translation.] 
"Eeport No. 1. 

"On the 28tli July Howqua visited the yamnn of the Grovemor- 
General (Yeh), and was received by his Excellency in the western 
reception-room. The interview lasted for a conple of hours (Chinese or 
English not specified — one of the former is equal to two of ours), and 
the attendants and every one else were excluded from it. It is impos- 
sible, therefore, to say what formed the subject of it, 

''At about 8 A.M. on the 29th, the Governor-General summoned two 
of the linguists before him, and put various questions to them, the 
subject of these questions being the state of affairs in Hongkong and 
its vicinity. He also required the linguists to bring to him an official 
letter that had been brought to Whampoa by an American ship. As 
soon as the Governor-General had perused this letter, he ordered the 
ofBcer in charge of the gate of the yaraun to inform Howqua that his 
Excellency wished to see him, and the expectant taoutae (or intendant 
of circuit) Chin, was also desired to wait Tipon his Excellency. The 
subject of the conference held by his Excellency with these officers, 
was an application on the part of the Americans to be allowed to 
trade. 

" We hear that the Americans have expressed their readiness to 
present the Governor-General with 200,000 dollars, in the event of his 
permitting them to carry on trade (at Canton) as heretofore. 

"On the 30th of July, Howqua proceeded, by direction of the 
Governor-General, to Whampoa, to see there the American consul and 
other officers, and to settle with them i-elative to the permission given 
to the American merchants to trade at Euhshan, Chintsun, and other 
places. 

"The Americans had another request to make — namely, the grant 
of an island at which they might carry on their trade with China, but 
the Governor-General said he could decide on nothing in reference to 

L 



146 CHINA. 

this important matter without previously bringing the subject to the 
notice of the Emperor. 

"Letters have been received from Foochow, stating that the com- 
mittee (for supplies of vi^ar) at Nantai, the suburb by the bridge, 
resolved on levying a tax on Patna opium of forty dollars per chest, 
and four dollars per ten catties on Malwa and Turkey opium. 

"The Governor-G-eneral took occasion only recently to inform all the 
high principal oflScers, comprising the principal Committee for War 
Supplies, that as the barbarians now desired to treat for peace, some 
relaxation might be allowed in the strict guard hitherto maintained, 
and that with this view the (or certain of the) city -gates might be 
opened, and traffic again permitted. Subsequently to the issue of these 
orders, reports wei'e repeatedly received of Shaouhing being greatly 
distressed by rebels, who, it would appear, have invested that city. 
Directions were thereupon given for the despatch of some of the 
officers, soldiers, and bi'aves who had been employed against the 
barbarians, to relieve the said city by extirpating the rebels, and 
accordingly a force embarked in seventy boats, under the orders of Soo- 
hai, bound to Kaouming, a district city near to Shaouhing. This force 
took its depai'ture on the 25th and 26th of July, and on the 2nd inst. 
word came that it had sustained a severe defeat, many of the boats 
Laving been burnt, and the whole force scattered. Soohai himself was 
among the missing. 

" The 29th of July being the emperor's birthday, all the provincial 
authorities were in attendance at gunfire, in the temple dedicated to 
his Majesty, where they did reverence before the sacred tablet. For 
seven days — namely, from the 26th of July to the 1st of August — they 
all appeared in public in full uniform." 

" Eeport No. 2. 

"The following particulars have been taken from the records in the 
yamun of the Governor-General : — 

[The first report describes the measures taken by the Governor- 
General to prevent the exportation of copper cash to Shanghai, his 
interviews with the prefect and magistrates of Canton, and the orders 
issued resultioyjjf in the arrest of twelve of the money-changers, who,, 
it was understood, would be severely punished, &c.] 

" On the 6th of August the Governor-General summoned Lin 
Fuhshing, an expectant prefect, and one of the officers on the 
Committee for the Supplies of War. Shaouhing, it appears, has been 
invested by a rebel force, who, taking advantage of the swollen state 
of the West River, swept down past Fungchuen and Tihhing, two 
cities near the borders of Kwangsi province and about 150 miles to 
the west of Shaouhing, their advance being greatly assisted by means 
of large rafts constructed of heavy spars lashed together, and having 
fires lighted at the foremost end. Their presence before Shaouhing^ 
occasioned the greatest distress and alarm in that city. News had 
previously been received (at Canton) of the defeat of Soohai's (late 
admiral at Escape Creek) fleet, with the loss of seventy junks : the 



EEPORTS FROM MY CAKTON SPY. 147 

number of missing soldiers and officers had not been ascertained. The 
Governor-General's object in now summoning Lin Fuhshing, was to 
direct him to go to the relief of that place with 1,000 of the Lin 
Braves (a body raised for the defence of Canton by his father, who 
acted at one time as chief magistrate of Shanghai, therefore called Lin 
Braves — the braves raised by Lin), and the Governor-General authorized 
him to hire thirty fast boats to serve as transports, and to travel day 
and night. Kwan Tapir, the military commander-in-chief of the whole 
province, is holding Shaouhing against the rebels with about 3,000 
regulars. 

" On the 7th of August, the Governor-General ordered the acting 
taoutai Le and the expectant prefect Chin to take a linguist with 
them, and proceed to Ta Shili and Changchow to confer with the 
American merchants there, but the particular nature of the business 
did not transpire. 

''Again, all the boats at Chintsun, Kiangman (towns of supply for 
Canton and Macao), and other places, that have been lying there laden 
with tea and silk and other produce, have received passes from the 
Chinese authorities allowing them to proceed to Macao and to trade 
there with the foreign merchants. 

"The principal officers on the Committee for the Supplies of War, 
viz., the Commissioner of Finance and Commissioner of Justice (being 
the highest officers of the province next to the Governor-General and 
Governor), had an audience of the Governor-General to discuss in an 
informal manner the condition of the funds at their disposal. They 
represented that they had already delivered to the committee the 
following recent contributions : — 

Taels. 

From the Shuntih district 150,000 

From the Heangshan district 120,000 

From the Sinhwuy district. . 120,000 

As well as additional contributions or per-centages 

from other sources of .. .. .. .. 78,000 

Total 468,000 

**They further represented that now, while the barbarian afFaii's 
remained unsettled, the daily expenditure of the committee for the 
hire of junks, braves, and their equipments amounted to upwards of 
12,000 taels, and that this sum would now be further increased by 
upwards of 7,500 taels, in consequence of the additional outlay they 
were obliged to incur to provide means for checking the alarming 
advance of the rebels upon Shaouhing ; that therefore the incomings 
were not sufficient to meet the expenditure, and they accordingly 
moved the Governor-General to appoint a deputation, consisting of a 
taoutai and a prefect, with ten associates of the rank of district 
magistrates, to make a tour through all the districts of the province, 
to raise therein all the contributions in their power, making returns of 
the same every three months to the provincial government. 

L 2 



148 CHINA. 

" The proposal received the assent of the Governor-General, who 
said that the appointment of the officers who were to compose the 
deputation should be made on the 11th or 12th of August. 

" The levy of an import duty on opium, both in the viceroyalty of 
the two Kiang provinces and in that of Fuhkien and Chehkiang, has 
been officially announced (by the governors-general of those provinces 
to the Government of Kwangtung), and his Excellency the super- 
intendent of maritime customs at Canton and the Governor-General 
Yeh have despatched a joint memorial to the Court, begging to be 
instructed whether it is his Majesty's pleasure that the same course 
should be adopted in these provinces. This memorial was sent off in 
the charge of a special officer on the 8th instant. 

" The Le Szeting (a Tartar civilian) reported the issue of rations to 
the Tartar troops for the fifth month (May-June). On this occasion 
7-lOths had been issued in grain and 3-lOths in cash, the total amount 
of grain being 7,600 shih, and of cash 3,200 teaou and upwards. (A 
shih is about equal to a picul, 133ibs. ; a teaou is 1,000 cash, about 
6s. 8d.) 

" On the 8th instant an officer reported his return from Pekin, and 
that he was the bearer of a present, consisting of incense, deers' sinews 
(which are stewed into a soup — a great Chinese luxury), and other 
things, whi^.h the Emperor had been pleased to confer on Yeh's father. 
These were accordingly received in state in the viceroy's yamun. 

" Dated Canton, August 10." 

[Translation.] 

" Eepokt No. 3. 

*' Note of Occurrences in the Yamun of the Im'perial High 
" Covimissioner Yeh, 

'' August 20. 

** One of the viceroy's messengers (an officer) arrived to-day from 
Pekin. He brought a despatch from the Nuy-woo-foo (or office for the 
management of the Imperial household), stating that the Emperor had 
been pleased to direct that the superintendent of maritime customs for 
the province of Kwangtung (or hoppo of Canton) should continue to 
hold that appointment for another year. A second despatch from the 
Nuy-woo-foo enclosed eight taels' weight of pearls and 370 pieces of 
ginseng, the value of which, estimated at 114,000 taels, the hoppo is 
required to pay into the treasury of the household. He has given 
notice of his readiness to pay 74,000 taels, but has applied to the 
Governor-General to call on the salt commissioner for the remaining 
sum of 40,000 taels. 

" A despatch was also received from the Board of War (at Pekin), 
urging the transmission without further delay of the following supplies 
for the use of the main army near Nankin: — 170,000 taels of silver, 
8,000 catties of gunpowder, 1,000 catties of bullets. 

" The governor (Pih Kwei) had an interview to-day with the viceroy 



REPORTS FROM MY CANTON SPY. 149 

on the subject of supplies required for the army in Hoonan. The com- 
missioners who have to provide for the necessary munitions for that 
force have sent an officer to Canton to purchase 2,000 rattan shields 
and 500 foreign muskets, and their excellencies had to consider whom 
they should depute to procure the latter either at Hongkong or 
Macao, 

" Tsang-fungn-een, the admiral commanding at Yang Kiang (in 
Shaouhing department), and Wei-tse-pang, commanding the naval 
station at Shuntih (between the Bogue and Canton), were admitted to 
an interview with the Governor-General, and received directions to 
take under their orders 3,000 regulars and militia; and having em- 
barked them in fifty war-boats and thirty cargo-boats, to proceed with 
them to the relief of Woochow with all possible despatch. 

" The head committee for the supplies of war issued 20,000 taels of 
silver to certain officers deputed by them to purchase at Chin-tsuu and 
Kiang-mun 10,000 piculs of rice, which it is the intention of the com- 
mittee to forward immediately to Woochow, under convoy of a force of 
500 men that have been told off for the purpose. 

" The commissioners of fi.nance and of justice waited upon the 
vicei'oy to report to him the condition of the funds of the head com- 
mittee for the supplies of war. They have still in hand 581,000 taels, 
but this sum, it appears, is not more than sufficient to meet the 
demands that will be made upon them during the first ten days of this 
month (August-September), They therefore suggested that officers 
should he deputed to visit the various districts in the vicinity of 
Canton, in order to secure the prompt payment and immediate trans- 
mission to Canton of fresh contributions, 

" The Prefect of Canton reported that the Wan-ming gate (on the 
south face of the old city) had been again opened and placed in the 
charge of an officer and guai'd, 

" His Excellency Shwang, the Tartar Lieutenant-General of the 
right division (of the garrison), had an interview with the viceroy, to 
request his assistance in procuring for the use of the naval brigade to 
be attached to the Tartar force 1,200 jackets of cow-hide and 80O 
foreign muskets. The head committee for supplies of war were directed 
to arrange for the purchase of these articles, the cost, amounting to 
upwards of 7,000 taels, being defrayed by the Tartar commander-in- 
chief, 

" August 23. 

" Keports were received to-day from the west (of the province). It 
appears that, although the rebels of Tihhing and Fungchuen have 
fallen back, Woochow is suffering severely from the long siege, and is 
now without provisions. In the middle of the sixth month (beginning 
of August) a tael (or ounce) of silver could only purchase ten ounces of 
rice, and both soldiers and people were dying in great numbers. This 
slender supply of grain is now exhausted, and hides, offal, birds, rats, 
and other vermin, are eagerly sought after as food. The sufferings of 
the survivors cannot be described. They make the most urgent appeals 
for assistance or relief of any kind, and the viceroy has called upon the 



150 CHINA. 

different tradesmen and shopkeepers to contribute dried meat, dried 
potatoes, rice, cakes, and portable foods of that nature, "which are to be 
conveyed to Woochow as fast as they are received. 

'* A viceroy's messenger left for Pekin with three memorials from 
his Excellency Yeh to the Throne, one reporting the remission of six 
months' taxes to the inhabitants of Siuhing, Siuning, Kaouming, and 
other districts in the vicinity of Shaouhing ; another announcing the 
arrival of the governor (Pihkwei), and his resumption of office ; and 
the other reporting the recent descent of the rebels upon Shaouhing, 
the defeat of the Imperial fleet, and the death of Soohai. 

"August 24. 

*' An officer from the department of Chaou-chow-foo (in the east of 
the province) reported his arrival at Canton as bearer of 65,000 taels, 
which had been contributed by the mercantile classes of Chaou-chow. 
The viceroy directed that the money should be paid over to the com- 
mittee, and that the officer should be admitted to an audience to- 
morrow. 

" The district magistrate of Shuntih, near the Bogue, reported his 
arrival with 137,000 taels, being the amount realized upon the lands 
and property of rebels, or people in their interest, that had lately been 
sequestered. The viceroy directed the delivery of the money to the 
committee, and the admission of the magistrate to an audience to- 
morrow. 

" The district magistrate of Nanhai reported the detection of certain 
frauds in the collection of the sums which the pork-butchers of Canton 
had been called upon to contribute. The fraud had been committed by 
the butchers themselves, and the magistrate was authorized to proceed 
against them for the sums that had been short paid, amounting to 
18,000 taels." 

Such are tlie reports of my Canton spy. 

In my last letter I ventured to point out that when 
England assumes the character of champion of all civilized 
nations she incurs some rather onerous responsibilities. If 
all are to share in the advantages she claims for herself, 
she is bound to guarantee to the Chinese that by none shall 
those advantages be abused. I must recur to this subject, 
even at the risk of being tedious, for it is a most important 
topic for consideration in any future treaty. 

Every one who looks at China from the English point of 
view must now be satisfied that no treaty can be worth the 
powder which salutes its signature if it do not stipulate that 
China shall become one of the great family of civilized 
nations. Foolish people treat children with alternate coax- 
ings and floggings, and John Bull, with a certain conceited 



BRITISH SHIPPING INTERESTS. 151 

pity, lias so treated John Cliinaman. Treat him as a man, 
and exact from him the duties of a civilized man, and you 
will have no further trouble with him. 

The port of INTingpo is an example of what a hundred 
other large cities will be when you have obtained your 
object of an unrestricted trade up all the great rivers on all 
the coasts of China. It is what Hangchow, Chin-Kiang, 
and Nankin will be. Your direct trade is only to the im- 
mediate district ; the carrying trade will attract ships from 
all European countries. Hamburg sends more ships up the 
Ningpo river than even England. Every petty nation that 
has a flag to lend or sell is represented either by its square- 
rigged ships or by its nondescript lorchas. Sweden and 
Denmark, and Hamburg and Holland, and Spain and Por- 
tugal, are all Christian nations, all have traded, or say they 
have traded, to Canton, and all have flags under which 
honest men and scoundrels may equally claim treaty rights. 
But these nations have no consuls and no men of war to 
keep the peace. If an English, an American, or a French 
ship comes to Ningpo, she must pay her tonnage-dues and 
get her grand chop before she can clear out. If an armed 
Hamburg ship comes up the river she does as she pleases, — 
that is to say, she pays no tonnage-dues, to the obvious dis- 
advantage of the ships of the great Powers. The other day 
five Europeans boarded a Chinese junk in that river, and, 
under pretence of being officers entitled to see her papers, 
plundered her of all the silver she had on board. Complaint 
was raade. 

One of the pirates was found to be an English subject — 
one Murphy — he was tried before the consul and sentenced 
to two years' imprisonment. Several of the others were 
Europeans, subjects of nations represented by no authorities 
here ; there was no power to touch them. 

This is a difficulty which must be met, if we would not 
" open up China " to all the outlaws of Europe j but it is 
not insurmountable. Let it be part of the treaty stipu- 
lation that no nation shall claim the advantages of a treaty 
power except under conditions. Let one of those conditions 
be, that when that nation is unrepresented at any port the 
two senior consuls, or the English, Erench, and American 



152 CHINA. 

consuls, or the consul chosen by the other resident consuls 
for that ^^ui^pose, shall have the consular power over the 
subjects of the nation. I believe that to render the remedy 
perfect you must go still further, and provide that the re- 
sident consuls shall assist each other with any force at their 
command in order to preserve order and enforce the pro- 
visions of the treaty. The time is not far distant when 
commerce will teach China how to defend herself. I noted 
these remarks at Ningpo in sight of an armed commercial 
steamer and four large ship-rigged vessels, all owned by 
merchants of ISTingpo who wear tails and carry fans. iVt 
present, however, Chinese mandarins in this peaceful North 
dread all hostile contact with Europeans who are not Por- 
tuguese, and it is rather our policy to cherish this feeling. 

The case of Tobin, the man who went up the country to 
collect " convoy money," or, in plain English, to rob with 
violence, is another embarrassment. The man is dead, and 
the circumstances are, it appears, worse than they were first 
reported. When he had, either in anger or by mischance, 
shot one of his Chinese comrades, the villagers seized him 
and lashed his arms and legs to a bamboo pole, passed up 
his back. The poor wretch's torments must have been 
fearful. He could not lie, he could not sit ; the thongs 
were eating through his flesh, and his wounds were fester- 
ing in the sun. A little boiled rice was daily put into his 
mouth, and that was all. Six days he endured this. On 
the seventh he was taken to Dr. Parker's hospital, his 
wrists, and legs, and back, all covered with sloughing sores. 
He had been tortured to death, and he died. 

Now, this is the most important fact that has occurred 
since the late war. The aifair of the Arrow is as nothing 
compared with it. It is the murder of a British subject. 
There is no reason to regret that this wretched ruffian has 
ceased to live ; but we must recollect that he was tortured 
to death, not because he was a robber, but because one of 
his own fellow-ruffians was slain. The conduct of the 
villagers was in direct contravention of the treaty, and the 
precedent, if allowed, Avill apply to any Englishman who 
may accidentally violate Chinese law while in pursuit of 
peaceful avocations. 



NO DEFENCES IN THE NORTH. 153 

I have no doubt that Mr. Meadows will deal with this 
matter with the temper and firmness it requires. The elder 
of the village must be made accountable for this English (or 
rather Irish) life as he would have been accountable for a 
Chinese life, and the reparation should be very public. 
Otherwise any treaty will be a dead letter. To-day the 
victim is a worthless outlaw ; next year the victim's name 
may be Jardine, or Dent, or Perceval, or Gibb, or Fletcher. 

As I thought the English public may like to know what 
preparations the Chinese are making in the neighbourhood 
of Ningpo, and what probability there is of a repetition of 
the occurrences of the last war, I determined to spend a 
few days in a survey of the scenes of our most important 
conflicts. 

I believe that John Bull will be utterly disappointed of 
anything like a fight. Ningpo itself is defended along the 
whole extent of its v/alls by two guns, whose explosion 
would be terrific and cause immediate destruction to all 
who should approach — to fire them. 

It is said there are a thousand soldiers in the city, and 
the assertion is very probable. But the Chinese, who in- 
vented everything, invented that system of purchase which 
is the ornament and safeguard of our military system. They 
carry out the principle further than we have yet done. In 
China a soldier receives a certain modicum of cash and rice, 
amounting perhaps to sixpence a day, he attends parade 
now and then when called upon, and he works at his trade 
at all other times. This is an advantageous position, and 
the mandarins take care he shall not get it for nothing. 
From fifteen to thirty dollars, according to the demand, is 
the price paid for his commission by a private in the 
Chinese army. Some time since some tall strong Shantung 
fellows who were out of employ wished to enlist. Their 
offer was laughed at, and some old men and cripples whose 
friends wished to provide for them in the army of the 
Empire were duly registered. I believe that if at any 
moment Commander Dew were to land his seventeen ma- 
rines and proceed to the toutai's yamun, and were to tell 
him that his sovereign had resolved to annex Ningpo and 
the surrounding plain, and that Mr. Consul Meadows now 



154 CHINA. 

reigned as toutai, the old gentleman would simply protesc 
that such conduct was " most unreasonable " and would be 
led away like a lamb. As to the people, they are so worn 
out with continual " squeezes " that a judicious proclamation 
would quite reconcile them to the change. 

Shanghai, Sept. 20. 

Since the Bemi started with the mail and my despatch, 
we have the semi-monthly from England with dates to the 
28th of July. Messrs. Jardine's house, in their usual grand 
seigneur way of doing things, despatch a fast private steamer 
to overtake the mail or perhaps to outstrip it. So I have 
an opportunity for more last words. 

I have nothing to chronicle, however, except the blank 
disappointment of all the English residents at the news just 
received. Delhi not fallen, and Lord Palmerston's Pekin 
monomania strong upon him. "We had hoped that Lord 
Elgin, sharing, as we all believe he does, the universal feel- 
ing here, would have obtained leave to allow the Kussians 
and the French to go up and each get his kick at the mouth 
of the Peiho, while he stayed south and took Canton. The 
[Russian has got over his twenty days' naval koo-too. The 
Frenchman comes on very leisurely to take his turn of ~- 
humiliation. Lord Elgin may now, I suppose, be expected 
in about a fortnight. He also, with the navy of England, 
must dance attendance in a sea of winter tempests while the 
petty mandarin at the mouth of the Pekin river is calculating 
how long he can keep up the exhibition of the humiliation 
of the " barbarians." Oh ! that narrow blue ribband of the 
Foreign Office. It is harder, and tougher, and stiffer than 
the red tape of the Circumlocution Office ; it swathes the 
energies of nations, while the red tape only cripples a clerk. 
The Emperor has just taken pains, by an announcement in 
the Pekin Gazette, to let the world know that he is informed 
of and approves Yeh's doings at Canton. France and Pussia 
have no casus helii- — they have no factories destroyed, no 
steamers taken and burnt, no proclamations of head-money 
to resent. They have their quarrel to seek, and they go up, * 
therefore, and offer their faces to the smiter. "We are in the 
position of that valorous individual who said, '' Sir, you have 



CANTON FIRST — AND THEN TIEN-SING. 155 

tweaked my nose, you liave kicked me behind, you have 
knocked my hat over my eyes ! Take care, sir ; you may 
go too far ; you may rouse the sleeping lion ! " Oh for one 
three months of the elder Pitt! He would have telegraphed 
— " Take Canton and hold it with your present force." And 
it would have been done ; for, although the authorities here 
are afraid of ^' her Majesty's opposition," they are not afraid 
of Chinamen. With Canton taken, and some gunboats at 
Tien-sing, we might write our own treaty and have it signed 
in three months. 

But no ; years, and niillions, and perhaps fleets, certainly 
human lives, must be sacrificed to the pedantry of diplomacy. 
Somehow or other those six black rams who are reputed to 
be the genii of Canton city seem to have obtained seats in 
our House of Commons. 

Then we are told that sailing-ships can carry troops faster 
than steam-ships, and judging from the choice made, we are 
also to believe that regular old water-bruisers with indifferent 
antecedents are better than good screw-vessels. I find that 
some people here know, or profess to know, something about 
these ships — what one of them was sold for, and how many 
times that amount her charter to China will bring, what 
happened to another of them, and so on. However, let us 
hope that they will bring us our 1,500 marines out in time 
to eat their Christmas dinner in Canton. 



156 



CHAPTER XVI. 

MISCELLANEOUS NEWS. 

Prospects of the Silk Trade — Disturbances ia the Silk Districts — Tea 
— Opium — Little Panics at Hongkong — Lord Elgin abandons his 
Intention of Proceeding immediately to Pekin — Sir F, Nicholson's 
Observations on the late Typhoon — Practical Deduction as to the 
Desirability of Chusan Harbour. 

Shanghai, Sept. 27. 
This morning the Noma, Peninsular and Oriental steamer 
(extra), starts for Suez, with 1,500 bales of silk. She has 
been put on entirely for commercial purposes, and will pro- 
bably go round by Bombay. It is quite uncertain, there- 
fore, whether her letters will arrive earlier than the next 
regular mail, so that, even if I had any political news to 
communicate, this is not a favourable opportunity. 

The few words I have to say, therefore, must be of com- 
mercial matters — a little Rialto talk. 

Silk is in Shanghai just now what the " Derby" is at 
Tattersall's early in May. Every one is talking about it, 
and some are speculating in it. The Chinamen are afraid of 
the news by the next mail, and have reduced their demands 
by twenty dollars a bale. Some people think they see their 
way clear with this reduction, and have bought up 3,000 
bales. Others, however, believe that this will not do. They 
argue that the statistics of silk, the stocks in England, the 
stocks in France, and the 12,000 bales actually in Shanghai, 
look bad for high prices ; that the easiest thing in the world 
to be su23prime is a silk dress ; and that, therefore, the pre- 
f5ent demands are dangerously high. Of this opinion are the 
Capulets and the Montagues of this settlement. So John. 
Chinaman is likly to keep a large portion of his 12,000 bales, 
and also of his 80,000 bales up the country, unless he can. 
make up his mind to lower his prices. 

But our long-tailed friend is very rich. He has been 



PROSPECTS OF THE SILK TRADE. 157 

tempted by last year's higli prices to sell all that hoarded 
box-silk which Chinamen (whose civilization does not extend 
to a national debt or to joint-stock banking establishments) 
are in the habit of laying by for rainy days. He can afford, 
therefore, to hold, and at present he is not inclined to drop 
very low. 

A curious illustration of Chinese government has arisen 
from the sudden wealth accumulated in the silk districts by 
the demand and the prices of the last two years. The man- 
darins (as in our ignorance we call all Chinese officials, from 
a sergeant or a tide-waiter to a governor or a prime minister) 
went forth into the country where wealth was said to have 
accumulated for a general " squeeze." The official eye had 
marked the sponge to swell, and the official hand descended 
to press it. But the country folk do not manure their 
mulberry- trees, and pick their leaves, and breed their silk- 
worms, and wind their cocoons for mere amusement. They 
flew to arms — which were probably their bamboo carrying- 
poles — and drove the squeezing party out of the country. 
" Tread upon a worm and it will turn," say we English, in 
one of those pompous falsehoods which pass from mouth to 
mouth as coined wisdom. The Chinese silkworm-breeder 
ought to have known that if you tread hard enough and full 
enough the worm vtill not turn, but will squeeze. The man- 
darin party certainly knew this. They sent to Hangchow 
for soldiers — they returned and set fire to the village whence 
they had been ejected — and now what was, when I traversed 
it last month, the most prosperous district of China, is being 
visited with all the blessings of immediate Imperial atten- 
tion. I should not wonder if this matter spread, for a 
Chinaman will fight for his dollars. 

Tea, they tell me, is selling at from 6d. to 8d. per pound 
dearer in Shanghai than it is in England. The wise men 
say that the first crop having been lost, and the stocks being 
low, this uncomfortable state of things is likely to continue. 

You will be glad to hear that opium has reached a 
tremendous price, so that the opium-smoker — and every man 
who wears a tail in these parts takes an occasional whiff — 
will persevere in his bad habits under considerable dis- 



158 CHINA. 

Shanghai, Oct. 7. 

You have lieard sufficiently from me lately, and happily I ' 
have nothing to say. I shall say it as shortly as possible. 

We have had ten days of almost continuous rain at this 
most critical season of the year. The rice is rotting on the 
ground, and the cotton, in full flower, is soaked and spoilt. 
Famine and poverty will fall upon the peasantry, and what 
we are pleased to call the rebellion will spread and 
strengthen. 

Canton is being fed by rice and peas and pulse despatched 
hence, and from Ningpo and Amoy. There is a movement 
also of soldiers and money southward. Peh Kwei, the 
Governor of Canton, under Yeh, who is Governor-General 
of the province, in returning from Pekin to his city, has been 
levying contributions and enlisting troops. My letters from 
Swataw tell me that he lately passed through that port, 
where so large an unrecognized commerce is carried on, and 
took the opportunity of squeezing the Chinese merchants 
there. 

Three hundred Chinese soldiers have arrived from the 
army before Nankin, and are being conveyed in a British 
ship at five dollars ahead, from this port to Swataw. Swa- 
taw had a direct canal-communication with Canton, and is 
only ninety miles distant from that city. 

The people at Hongkong have had many rumours that a 
large army was to be assembled at Cowloon, that snake 
boats were being built at Whampoa, and that a massacre 
was to be attempted inside the colony in aid of an attack 
from without. If the Government of her Majesty's posses- 
sions in China were to intermit the proper precautions 
something disastrous would undoubtedly take place, for the 
Chinese who dwell in Hongkong are the most malignant and 
the most treacherous of human creatures. We have, more- 
over, had warning that this would be so hj writing under 
Yeh's hand, in his intercepted correspondence. In the 
absence of any gross imprudence on our side, however, I 
believe that nothing will be attempted. This activity in the 
north is prompted less by the proximity of the English than 
by the successes of those southern rebels of whom I have 
spoken in former letters, and who, as I believe, have no con- 



LOED ELGIN ABANDONS HIS EXPEDITION TO PEKIN. 159 

nection whatever with those of Nankin. The Emperor would 
be exceedingly disgusted to hear that Canton was in the 
hands of a rebel chief ; I am not sure that he would ex- 
perience unmixed dissatisfaction at hearing that it had been 
taken by the English. Until it has been taken he certainly 
dare not make a peace. 

The question of proceeding to Pekin is now settled by 
the delay of the French Ambassador and the efflux of time. 
It is understood that Lord Elgin has abandoned all inten- 
tion of immediately proceeding even to the Peiho. "We 
shall have our 1,500 marines about the beginning of Decem- 
ber, and perhaps a few repentant Bengalese, and then, I 
suppose " we shall see what we shall see." Meanwhile my 
" British expeditionary force" has vanished. I am like an 
unfortunate Polar bear who has drifted southwards upon an 
icefield, and sees his support, which had been melting from 
him hour by hour, at last crack and scatter. For some time 
it was like the army of a small German principality — all 
general and staff officers. Now these are moving off — 
General Garrett and his staff to Calcutta, and even Captain 
Peel to Allahabad. However, I think we see the way very 
clear here when the time comes. Meanwhile " China can 
wait — India presses." 

The Pussian plenipotentiary is here, and impresses every 
one who converses with him as a man of great ability. He 
was not allowed to land at the mouth of the Peiho. He 
reports the river to be fortified by long lines of forts, and 
some round towers, and he found thirteen feet of water upon 
the bar at full flood. Since his visit to the Peiho he has 
been to Japan. He is of opinion that a revolution is taking 
place in the policy of this people, and that they will soon be 
as anxious for foreign trade and intercourse as they have 
hitherto been jealous of it. They are navigating the steamer 
given them by the Dutch with a Japanese crew — engineers 
and stokers included, all are Japanese. 

Every day elapsed since the occurrence of the typhoon 
has brought tidings of some disaster occasioned by it. 
Sir Frederick Nicholson, of the Pique frigate, has occupied 
himself with the phenomena of this storm. He says, — 



160 ■ CHINA. 

*' Commencmg with the log of the Antonita, a three-masted schooner, 
under Buenos-Ayrean colours, we find that she rode out the gale at 
anchor. On the 3rd of September she was under the island of Chinki ; 
finding, however, that a heavy sea rolled into this anchorage, she 
weighed and bore up forLotsin Bay, where she rode out the remainder 
of the gale. It is evident that this vessel was in the noi'thern semi- 
circle of the syclone, for the wind gradually veered round from .N.E. to 
E.N.E. then to E., and finally to E.S.E., as the gale moderated. 

" If we now turn to the Lanriclcs log we shall find that she was 
nearly at the southern limit of the cyclone. On the 4th of September, 
at noon, she was in lat. 24° 52' N., long. 119° 47' E., 67 miles south of 
the White Dogs, the well-known islands at the entrance of the river 
Min, and about 220 miles south of the Antonita in Lotsin Bay. 

" The LanricFs log on September the 4th notes a strong gale from 
W.N.W. to W.S.W., veering eventually to S.W. These winds from 
opposite directions experienced by the two vessels afford a convincing 
proof that the centre of the cyclone passed between them, — a fact we 
are enabled to verify by the log of the Water Witch. This vessel had 
the singular good fortune of escaping with comparatively slight damage, 
after passing through the vortex of this severe cyclone. Her com- 
mander, Captain Baker, places the centre, at midnic^ht September the 
3rd, in lat. 26° 12' N., long. 122° 18' E. It bears N.E. by E. 160 miles 
from the Lanriclcs position at noon on September the 4th ; a position 
differing but little from her place at midnight ; and from the Antonita 
the centre bears S.E. by S. 130 miles. 

" Most striking are the phenomena noted in the log of the Water 
Witch and in the account of the gale received from the Peninsular and 
Oriental Company's steamer Cadiz, which vessel steered into the centre 
of the cyclone, while endeavouring to get an offing in the neighbour- 
hood of the White Dogs. 

" The hurricane blowing from the north suddenly ceases, and gives 
place to a dead calm, lasting for a quarter of an hour. The sky is 
clear overhead, and the stars are seen shining brightly, while all around 
is gloom and darkness. Birds, and even fishes, are dropping and 
tumbling about the decks in great numbers. The tumultuous sea 
breaks in all directions, sweeping over the ship from end to end. After 
a brief interval of treacherous calm, the hurricane again bursts forth 
from the south with redoubled fury. All these are well-known 
S3^mptoms of being in the vortex of a rotatory storm. 

" On the 3rd of September, while iheBanshee was at some distance from 
the southward of the most severe portion of this gale, ' a tremendously 
heavy swell from the E.S.E.' is noted in her log. On the 5th of 
September she fell in with the Siamese ship Friendship), which had 
been dismasted in the gale. The position of the centre for midnight 
on the 3rd of September then bore S, S.E. 60 miles, 

" The log of the Friendship will no doubt prove that vessel to have 
been dismasted not far from the vortex of the cyclone. 

" The French ship Mansart met the cyclone between the north end 
of Formosa and the island of Kumi in the evening of September the 
2nd. Finding the gale rapidly freshening from N. W., Captain G-rave- 



SECURITY OF CHUSAN HARBOUR. 161 

reau bore up for shelter under the Meiaco Islands. After having in 
vain attempted to heave to, the Mansart continued scudding with the 
wind right aft, graduall}'- altering course as the gale veered round from 
N.W. to W., and finally to S.W. This vessel thus sailed round the 
southern portion of the cyclone, and passed out to the northward 
between the Meiaco and Loochoo Islands, when the wind had mode- 
rated, and was blowing from S.E. The MansarVs log shows the gale 
to have been at its height on the afternoon of September 3 ; the wind 
was then S.W., and the centre, as fixed by Captain Baker, of the Water 
Witch, bore N.W. by W. 220 miles. 

" Captain Gravereau describes both wind and sea as terrific ; his 
crew were constantly at the pumps, and he was obliged to throw over- 
board a portion of the cargo to save his vessel from foundering, 

" The intelligence from Tamsui, at the N.E. corner of Formosa, 
announces the loss of sevei-al vessels. Exposed as that anchorage must 
have been to the whole fury of the worst portion of the cyclone, the 
centre of which must have passed within a very moderate distance of 
Tamsui, it is not surprising to hear that serious disasters have occurred 
at that place. 

" At Foochow the' gale was felt in all its severity. A number of 
the houses were unroofed, but we do not hear of any serious damage 
having been done to the shipping in the river Min. On the 4th of 
September, when the gale was at its height, the wind is stated to have 
been N.W. ; and on the 5th of September, the gale having moderated 
and the barometer having commenced rising, the wind is reported as 
S.E. Hence it is probable that the centre passed very nearly over 
Eoochow. Three barometers are said to have fallen to 28*85, 28'30, 
and 28'40, respectively. 

" The gale was not felt at Amoy." 

The most important lesson to be derived from this storm 
is the relative safety of the harbours of China. While I 
was riding it out in Chusan harbour in a little vessel of 
Chinese rig, square-rigged vessels were being torn from their 
anchorage in the so-called harbours of JFormosa, dashed to 
•piecesj and all their crews drowned. 



162 



CHAPTER XYII. 

THE BRITISH IMPORT TRADE INTO CHINA. 

Geographical View — Population — Balance of Trade — Silk Exports to 
China from 1839 to 1857 — Remarks on these Statistics — The Opium 
Trade — Increase of Quantity and Decrease of Value of Silver — 
Reasons alleged for the Paucity of British Exports — Examination 
of these Reasons — Table of Chinese Transit Duties — The Question 
of the Existence of Differential Duties in China Discussed — The 
Author's Four Reasons for Unsatisfactory Condition of Export Trade 
to China — Imaginary Voyage up the Yang-tse Kiang — Conclusion 
of this Inquiry. 

Fortunately for me my mission to China has in it some- 
thing more than to chronicle the proceedings of the Elgin 
embassy ; or I should have died of idleness. A much higher 
object is to study upon the spot the subject of our trade 
with this empire, and to labour to discover how commerce 
may be developed, and this great region opened up. 

It is a task of dull utility. If there be any who look 
to my letters for amusement I warn them to quit my com- 
pany. I have nothing to show them but hard facts and 
perplexing figures. 

Eirst, let me say a few words upon the corpus subjectum — 
the region we seek to open. 

The eighteen provinces of China Proper are quite suifi- 
cient for our present purposes. The half-tamed moun- 
taineers of Thibet are six times nearer to Calcutta than 
to Pekin. The tribes of Mahomedans who inhabit the 
vast hill districts to the north of Thibet are to the rich 
provinces of China Proper, which lie upon their eastern 
boundary, what the highlands once were to the lowlands of 
Scotland. Chinese Tartary, lyiug along the north, is rich 
only in hill and desert. It is to that densely jDeopled piece 
cf the globe which lies between the China Sea and Tartary, 



WHERE OUR CUSTOMERS D\YELL. 163 

between the Yellow Sea and Thibet and Kokonor, that we 
must look for advantageous relations. 

This compact mass is about half the size of Europe, about 
seven times the size of France, and about fifteen times the 
size of our islands. It is about 1,500 miles long and 
broad. M'CuUoch reckons that in square miles it measures 
1,348,870. 

Cutting off the surrounding fringe of savage life, China 
is still a vast empire, but not so immeasurable or so unman- 
ageable as we are accustomed to conceive it to be. With a 
railway like our Great Western laid down, we might 
traverse it from north to south, or from east to west ia 
thirty hours. 

This country contains 360,279,897 human creatures. The 
amount need not startle us. If England and Wales were 
as large as China, England and Wales would contain within 
one-ninth of the same amount of population. If Lombardy 
were as large as China, Lombardy would contain 360,000,000 
also ; and if Belgium were as large as China, Belgium would 
contain 400,000,000. Take the average of the whole 
eighteen provinces, and there is nothing very remarkable in 
the figures as they come out. The population of China, as 
a whole, is not excessive. But when we come to note the 
distribution of that population the figures become very 
remarkable. There is a pressure upon the eastern seaboard, 
provinces suck as is without parallel in the world. The 
Chinese coasts, which look out towards Japan, and whence 
a straight sea-line might be drawn to Australia, are choked 
with people: the average for the whole empire being 268 to 
the square mile, Kiangsu has 850 j its next inland province, 
Anhui, has 705 ; Shantung, to the north on the coast, has 
444 ; the imperial district of Chihli, 475 ; and Chekiang, on 
the coast to the south, has 671. 

After these come those smaller central provinces of Honan 
(420) and Hupeh (389), which extend westwards through, 
the centre of the empire, and which, together with the 
province of Sz'chuen form the girdle of China. The 
eastern part of Sz'chuen would show the same large amount 
of population ; but the western part joins upon Thibet 
and is mountainous and thinly peopled. 



164 CHINA. 

It is very important to our commercial inquiry to remem- 
ber the lay of the strata of Chinese population. If we go 
into the country with our cottons and our woollens, our lace 
and our hardware, it is to the men and women we must go, 
and not to the Celestial Mountains and the Sea of Stars. 

Let us remember, then, that the populous districts of 
China are, first, the provinces on the eastern seaboard — 
Chihli, " the imperial province j " Shantung, " the province 
east of the mountains ; " Kiangsu, " the province of the 
abundant river ; " Chekiang, " the province of the mean- 
dering river." Secondly, the inland girdle — forming pro- 
vinces Nganhwui, or Anhui, " the province of peace and 
plenty;" Honan, •■'the province south of the river ;" Hupeh, 
" the province north of the river ; " Sz'chuen, " the province 
of the four streams." 

I shall hereafter have occasion to show that these pro- 
vinces, so rich in men, are those with which we ought 
naturally to have the closest relations, that they are the 
most accessible to us, and that, with one exception, they are 
the provinces to wdiich we have hitherto had no access. 
Canton, with its neighbouring provinces of Kwangsi, 
Kweichow, and Yunnan, are the most thinly peopled pro- 
vinces in the empire. 

Kwangtung has only 241 inhabitants to the square mile, 
which is below the average ; Kwangsi has ninety-three, 
Kweichow has eigbty-two, and Yunnan fifty-one. Contrast 
these figures with the 850 of Kiangsu and the 705 of Anhui. 

Such is the country in which we seek to develop our trade. 

Let me now shortly sketch the present condition of that 
trade. 

It is a subject upon which the data are not very exact. 
Even with the assistance of two manuscript volumes of com- 
mercial statistics, compiled by one of the two largest mer- 
cantile houses in China for their own practical guidance, and 
very generously given up to my use, I tread this labyrintli 
of figures with considerable hesitation. 

At the end of the commercial year, 1854, the balance of 
trade between China and Great Britain was estimated at 
7,900,000 dollars, or 2,000,000 sterling against China. The 
estimate stands thus ; — 



BALANCE OF TRADE. 165 

Imports feom Great Britain and India. 
Opium, 65,000 to 70,000 chests .. .. 24,000,000 dollars. 

Cotton, 200,000 bales 4,000,000 „ 

Manufactures, &c. 4,000,000 „ 

Straits and India 1,600,000 „ 

Total .. 33,600,000 dollars. 

Exports to Great Britain and her Colonies. 

Tea, Great Britain .. 72,000,0001b. ) 
„ Australia .. .. 10,000,0001b. } 15,000,000 dollars. 
„ India, &c 3,000,0001b. ) 

Total .. .. 85,000,0001b. 

Silk 40,000 bales 9,200,000 „ 

Sundries 1,500,000 „ 

Total 25,700,000 dollars. 

During tlie succeedicg three years, the exports to Great 
[Britain have greatly increased. In the commercial year 
1856-7 the export of teas to England and her colonies was 
87,741,000 lb., and in the same year the deliveries in England 
of China silk amounted to 74,215 bales. 

The silk-exporting power of China seems to be without 
limit. Every year we take from her an annually increasing 
quantity. In 1843, there was not a bale sent home. In 
1845 there were 10,727 bales. In 1855 there were 50,489 
bales. 1856 showed an increase of 50 per cent, over 1855 ; 
and the present year, if the stocks on hand are 'brought to 
Europe, will show an increase of at least 50 per cent, over 
the year past. I am informed that if the Chinese succeed 
in establishing the prices now demanded, and in selling all 
their produce in stock, the money paid for China silk at 
Shanghai during the current vear, will certainly not 
be less than £10,000,000 sterling. 20, 40, 60, 90, 140 
are figures of rapid progress, yet they represent the advance 
of our silk imports from China. At the prices now 
paid you may, I believe, double this last quantity in the 
year to come. I do not understand, however, that by stimu- 
lating the production you can greatly decrease the price. 
We have, I believe, found by experience, that however 
abundant the corn-crop may be in America, there is a j)rice 
below which it will not be brought down for export, but can 



166 CHINA. 

be profitably employed at home ; so of China silk. You 
have to compete as buyers with such an enormous popula- 
tion of home consumers, that any extra production to meet 
our demands may be thrown, without great ejBfect, upon the 
home market. By improving the present faulty system of 
winding, you may perhaps make the silk more valuable, but 
if you take treble your ancient quantities you must pay 
treble your former quantity of silver, and so far increase the 
balance of the trade against you. 

The rapid increase of our imports from China is a source 
of unmixed joy to the merchants of the five ports. Their 
calculations do not extend beyond their own business. 
Why should they ? They send home the produce, and they 
receive its value. They do not feel the inconvenience 
occasioned to Europe by a constant and unvarying trade- 
wind, which blows semi-monthly cargoes of silver into the 
ports of a hoarding nation. Of course they stimulate the 
productive power of China so long as they can find a market 
for the produce j and they act from the healthy instincts of 
commerce. I am not about to resuscitate any of the buried 
heresies, which taught that there is a distinction between 
silver and gold and other articles of barter, or to suggest 
that a trade between tea and silk on the one side, and silver 
on the other side, ought to be disfavoured. I only wish to 
put the fact plainly, that such a trade has its inconveniences; 
that it would be much more advantageous to us to pay for 
our tea and our silk with goods of our own manufacture, 
upon which we make a large profit, than with a commodity 
which is not manufactured by us and upon which we make 
little or no profit. This is doubtless a self-evident proposi- 
tion, but self-evident truths must be paraded now and then 
if we would have Government keep them in view, and make 
adequate efforts to enforce them. We cannot open up China 
without Government energy and Government expenditure, 
and we must show that the end is worth the cost. 

British Exports. 

The condition of our export trade v/ill appear from the 
following table, for which I am indebted to an eminent 
Manchester house, and which deserves careful study : — 



TABLE OF EXPORTS TO CHIIfA. 



167 



Exports to China from London, Liverpool, and the Clyde, for Tu-enty- 
three Years, heghining with 1834, in which Tear the East-India 

Corapanys Monopoly ceased. 



Year. 


Worsted 

Stufls. 


Camlets. 


Long Ells. 


Woollens. 


Dyed and 

Printed 
Cottons. 


Plain 
Cottons. 


Cotton 
Twist. 




Pieces. 


Pieces. 


Pieces. 


Pieces. 


Pieces. 


Pieces. 


lbs. 


1S34 


1,950 


7,580 


101,676 


76,713 


40,462 


189,885 


1,535,260 


1835 


4,969 


5,528 


139,458 


59,605 


42,107 


247,249 


2,205,979 


1836 


12,436 


17,021 


137,415 


68,042 


60,776 


308,624 


3,073,934 


1837 


2,515 


6,180 


59,505 


35,281 


58,746 


250,504 


1,772,373 


1838 


15,586 


3,560 


115,380 


44,731 


49,250 


680,566 


3,912,480 


1839 


6,730 


1,250 


64,726 


25,034 


58,821 


482,850 


1,593,109 


1840 


3,210 


2,670 


107,424 


31,813 


29,856 


428,948 


2,478,800 


1841 


1,440 


620 


61,678 


40,970 


62,600 


714,697 


3,373,940 


1842 


376 


3,847 


53,616 


11,647 


39,460 


585,390 


5,119,060 


1843 


7,278 


10,977 


93,405 


45,657 


169,521 


1,228,796 


6,210,024 


1844 


14,265 


20,542 


98,214 


59,143 


242,197 


2,375,225 


3,110,074 


1845 


13,569 


13,374 


91,530 


62,731 


100,615 


2,998,126 


2,640,090 


1846 


8,415 


8,034 


75,784 


56,996 


81,150 


1,859,740 


5,324,050 


1847 


9,409 


3,500 


72,488 


60,931 


81,010 


1,365,360 


4,454,210 


1848 


9,322 


5,412 


80,884 


51,364 


90,100 


1,738,835 


4,553,390 


1849 


7,959 


6,521 


84,240 


46,351 


88,030 


1,838,450 


3,200,980 


1850 


5,630 


7,065 


82,100 


57,075 


126,970 


1,831,522 


3,011,970 


1851 


7,878 


13,088 


85,570 


38,869 


233,599 


2,741,125 


3,842,870 


1852 


S. 3,610 


7,647 


31,955 


30,059 


256,343 


2,281,932 


128,000 


»> 

1853 


C. 7,325 


10,017 


58,509 


18,966 


110,630 


1,043,625 


6,743,652 


10,935 


17,664 


90,464 


49,025 


366,973 


3,325,557 


6,871,652 


s. 2,170 


3.960 


13,400 


11,184 


88,340 


1,868,575 


63,050 


1854 


c. 8,092 


4,360 


23,803 


7,683 


66,340 


528,422 


5,176,137 


10,262 


8,320 


37,203 


18,867 


154,680 


2,396,997 


5,244,187 


S. 120 


2,720 


2,500 


7,587 


41,700 


374,100 




1855 


C. 4,520 


5,106 


25,880 


7,472 


53,950 


567,530 


3,485,550 


4,640 


7,326 


28,380 


15,059 


95,650 


941,630 


3,486,550 


S. 1,020 


1,410 


10,040 


14,467 


69,025 


1,310,350 


51,000 


1856 


c. 600 


860 


4,440 


2,870 


29,080 


494,608 


2,816,970 


1,620 


2,270 


14,480 


17,337 


198,105 


1,804,958 


2,867,970 


S. 2,800 


2,350 


17,224 


28,002 


159,362 


1,651,094 


60,500 




C. 4,628 


2,120 


19,418 


10,551 


122,422 


1,166,530 


5,519,100 


7,428 


4,470 


36,642 


38,553 


281,784 


2,817,624 


5,579,600 



Remarks. 

Panic in 1837 in England and America. 

From March 1839 until August 1S42 business was seriously interrupted by the 
war, &c. 

Northern ports opened for business in 1843. 

The rebellions have seriously affected business since 1853, both in the north and 
south. 

S. means Shanghai. C. means Canton, but Hongkong is included. 



168 CHINA. 

Several observations occur upon this statement. 

In the first place, there is no steady increase, no hope for 
the future, shown by these figures. In 1838 and in 1844 
we exported twice the quantity of worsted stuifs that we 
exported last year; in 1852 four times the amount of 
camlets. The long ells have fallen off from an average of 
90,000 to 36,642. The woollens have sunk from 68,042 in 
1836 to 38,553. Printed cottons vibrate with a somewhat 
higher average in later years, but printed cottons and cotton 
twdst show a large decrease since 1853. While I write there 
is a sudden demand for English cottons at remunerative 
prices, but both the demand and the price now obtained are 
temporary. The first arises from the partial failure of the 
cotton crop in China ; the second arises from a cause to 
which I shall have occasion more particularly to refer here- 
after — the alteration in the relative value between silver and 
copper cash. The consumer " up country" is prepared to 
pay the same quantity of cash for his cottons Avhich he used 
to pay, and, as these cash are now worth so much more in 
dollars, the Chinese merchant can afford to give higher prices 
in that metal which is the medium of European commerce. 
This, however, will quickly be altered by tlie extensive 
exports sure to come from England, or by a full cotton-crop 
in China. 

Secondly, reduction in prices has not been met by cor- 
responding increase of sales. The dollar price in China for 
shirtings, for instance, the great staple article of goods, has 
not for several years been more than half what it ranged at 
a few years previously ; yet we see by the table that the 
demand has not risen with the reduction in price. 

Thirdly, the years which appear to denote great activity 
are in reality years of great disaster. In 1843, 1844, and 
1845, when the northern ports had just been opened, the 
jDcople at home were wild with excitement. An eminent 
firm at Sheffield sent out a large consignment of knives and 
forks, and declared themselves prepared to supply all China 
with cutlery. The Chinamen, who know not the use of 
knives and forks (or, as they say, abandoned the use of them 
when they became civilized), but toss their rice into their 
mouths with chopsticks, would not look at these best balance- 



HISTORY OF THE EXPORT TRADE. 169 

liandles. TLey were sold at prices which scarcely realized 
their freight, and the shops in Hongkong were for years 
afterwards adorned with them, formed into devices, like guns 
and spears in an armoury. A London house of famous 
name sent out a tremendous consignment of pianofortes. 
The speculation was based, probably, on the calculation that 
China must contain 200,000,000 women, and, " now that 
China was opened up," at least one out of every 200 would 
wish to learn the piano. The Chinese remained faitliful to 
their gongs and trumpets, and refused all hospitality to this 
intrusive flight of squares, uprights, and horizontals. The 
embarrassment became great. Hongkong could not hold 
them. At last the consignees, being people of great social 
influence, extricated themselves by an act of grievous tyranny. 
They insisted upon every European resident buying two 
pianos. The price, as we may suppose, was not exorbitant, 
but what sale was efiected was a matter of private obliga- 
tion, and not by fair market. The consequence of this 
spirited conduct on the part of the manufacturers is, that 
pianos by the best makers abound in Hongkong and the four 
ports. An inevitable sequence arising from the indescribable 
humidity of the climate is, that these noise-boxes are all out 
of tune, and discourse most eloquent discord. 

What happened in the case of cutlery and pianos occurred 
also in a less noticeable manner in the case of those staple 
commodities which form the subject of our table, and which, 
in the present condition of our relations with China, are 
almost the only reasonable articles of export from Eng- 
land. 

A fourth observation which arises upon this table is the 
rising — I should rather say the risen — importance of the 
great northern port of Shanghai and the declining import- 
ance of the port of Canton. This will be strengthened by a 
careful analysis of the consular returns for 1856, whence it 
will appear that if we throw ofl" rice and Indian cotton the 
exports of British produce to Canton were £604,083. 4^., 
v/hile those to Shanghai amounted to £1,679,581. II5. 
Again, we must remember that these amounts include the 
English exports to Amoy and Eoochow, which are trans- 
shipped at Canton, and also some which afterwards reach 



170 



CHINA. 



Siiangliai, whereas (Slianghai being tlie most distant port) 
the Shanghai returns include only its own proper imports. 

I shall have to recur to this subject ; I only note the fact 
■now while I have this table under consideration. 

It is scarcely worth while to labour the proposition that the 
exports of British goods to China are in an unsatisfactory 
fitate, but the fact is put in a clear point of view by a com- 
parison of the exports to China with those to Calcutta : — 



Total Declared Value of Cargoes to China and Calcutta, 


1842 to 1856. 




China. 


Calcutta. 


i 


£. 


£. 


IFor tlie year 1842 




1,169,906 


2,187,076 


1843 




1,719,239 


2,963,695 


„ 1844 




2,358,776 


3,422,536 


1845 




2,480,910 


2,670,730 


1846 




1,724,810 


2,840.270 


1847 




1,526,600 


2,029,470 


1848 




1,398,510 


1,995,990 


,, 1849 




1,413,420 


2,623,070 


1850 




1,531,035 


3,250,939 


„ 1851 




2,098,903 


4,291,240 


1852 




2,509,582 


3,218.025 


1853 




1,656,989 


3,656,379 


1854 




964,969 


4,272,931 


1855 




1,188,763 


4,462,869 


1856 




' 2,005,681 


4,501,340 



On the one &ide we have a steady and well-sustained 
progress, on the other we have a varying and unpromising 
past, which throws no light upon the future. 

The opium trade, the least desirable part of our export 
trade to China, shows healthiest in statistics. The " foreign 
medicine trade," as the Chinese now more delicately call it, is 
sturdy and increasing. 



STATISTICS OF THE OPIUII TEADE. 



171 



The deliveries to the different opium stations in 1849 and 
1854 were as follow : — 



Names of Stations. 



Cumsingmoon 

Hongkong . . 

Macao 

Namoa 

Amoy 

Chewchew . . 

Mui 

Lookong 

Woosung 



184S. 



47,870 



p- 


P- 


15,400 


20,010 


900 
600 


j 2,760 


2,470 


3,095 


3,200 


3,860 


1,390 


1,382 


1,840 


4,495 


1,000 


2,190 


21,050 


28,870 



66,662 



I have not the station statement for 18-56, but the total 
amount was 76.300 piculs, and the value was 30,868,050 
dollars, or £7,202,545. Now, this is a very important sum 
of money, spent, no doubt, upon a very deleterious drug. 
Divided among the 360,000,000, it is nearly 6d per head 
per annum — about one-tenth of v/hat each one average 
unit of our 20,000,000 Britons spends in tobacco ; about 
one-sixth of what he spends additionally on gin and 
whisky. 

It is very wrong of John Chinaman to smoke opium to 
the extent of 6d. per head per annum. But what is he to 
do ? He detests beer and wine. You may leave an open 
brandy bottle in his custody for weeks, and it will not eva- 
porate. His strong samshoo is, so far as I can discover, almost 
a myth, except as an article to sell to foreign sailors. His 
vile tobacco is a very miserable debauch. It is used in very 
small pipes by the men, and is much affected by the ladies. 
My room at Hongkong looked closely upon the domesticities 
of a learned Chinese " teacher," his wife, and his child. The 
exigencies of the East — open casements and narrow thorough- 
fares — rendered strict seclusion difficult. Whenever, in mid- 
night, a more than usually intense sense of suffocation, or a 
particularly heavy thunderstorm, or a specially shrill fit of 
screaming from the infant Chinaman, or the sharp bite of 



172 CHINA. 

some mosquito wLicli liad eluded my fortifications, made me 
start up in bed, the same object always presented itself. 
The lady of the house opposite, with her hair full dressed, 
but otherwise in deshabille rather economical than elegant 
— the simplex without the munditiis — was always at her 
casement, gravely smoking a bamboo pipe. But for the 
mosquito curtains, I could almost have stretched forth my 
hand, and lit a cigar from her bowl. Alas ! I could quite 
taste the flavour of her tobacco, and it was not fragrant. 

If, then, John Chinaman, not being reasonable, will not 
get drunk, and if he has small comfort in the narcotic 
which it pleases us to patronize, what is he to do 1 It is 
not in his habits to call a temperance or a teetotal meeting, 
and harangue himself and his hearers into a state of excite- 
ment which leaves all other drunkenness far behind ; which, 
instead of involviug the penalty of sad reaction, is followed 
by sweet, soothing reports of platform speeches, by votive 
slippers, and by a pleasant consciousness of self- superiority 
to all other mundane creatures. He knows not the civiliza- 
tion which teaches means of cheap moral excitement. Our 
young ladies shall thrill with ecstasy while some dear good 
man is describing to them the horrors of drunkenness ; and 
in the next street some zealous surgeon shall electrify his 
medical class, and throw the blood up into his own head, 
while setting forth with anatomical severity the conse- 
quences of tight-lacing. But these are the resources of 
civilized Britons, not of pharisaical Chinamen. 

Yet there never was found in any age, or in any clime, a 
tribe, a race, or a nation, which had not some stimulant in 
which they habitually indulged. Mrs. Chinaman takes her 
mundungus ; her husband varies the same pleasure with an 
occasional whiff of the stronger narcotic. I wish he would 
drink beer, or whisky, or gin, or British brandy, for they 
are all recognized means of intoxication and British manufac- 
tures. But he steadfastly refuses — Que voulez-vous ? II est 
fait comme cela. 

A Chinaman loves opium as he loves nothing else. The 
head of a Parsee house at Hongkono^ was so civil as to take 
me into his warehouse, and to open two chests of opium,, 
that I might see the drug as it passes in commerce. 



THE OPIUM OF COMMERCE. 175 

The first consisted of balls, the size of a large apple 
dumpling, and when cut open the mass was found to be 
solid ; the other was full of objects which a commander in 
the navy not long since ordered his men to return to the 
owners of a captured junk : "Arn't you ashamed, my lads, 
to loot a lot of miserable Dutch cheeses ? " The " Dutch, 
cheeses" were fine Patna opium, worth about £5 each. 
They are globes of thick dark jelly, enclosed in a crust not 
unlike the rind of a cheese. My Parsee acquaintance tapped 
one with a fragment of the iron fastening of a chest, and 
drew forth about a spoonful of the evil-smelling drug. It 
was not the opium which engaged my attention ; it was thfe 
effect produced by it upon the surrounding coolies. I never 
before saw real excitement in a Chinaman's face. I've seen 
them tried for their lives and condemned to death, and I've 
seen them test the long-suffering patience of Mr. Tudor 
Davies in the Hongkong ^^olice-court, where that gentleman 
is daily engaged in laborious endeavours to extract truth out 
of conflicting lies.. I've seen them laugh heartily at an 
obscene gesture at a sing-song, and I once saw a witness grin 
with great delight as he unexpectedly recognized his most 
intimate friend, a tradesman of reputed wealth, among a 
crowd of prisoners in the dock. But these coolies, when 
they saw that opium, opened their horizontal, slit-shaped 
eyes, till they grew round and starting ; their limbs, so lax 
and limpid when not in actual strain of labour, were stiff 
from excitement ; every head was pressed forward, every 
hand seemed ready to clutch. There was a possibility that 
it v/ould be put down upon the window-sill near which we 
were standing. I could see the shadow of fingers ready to 
slide in. It was almost certain that it would be thrown 
aside — there was the hope of an opium debauch gratis, and 
this was the state of mind that hope created. 

The Chinese Governments have long ceased to strive 
against this passion for opium. I doubt whether they ever 
really did strive against it. At one time, when the balance 
of trade was against China, the opium was drawing the Sycee 
silver out of the country, and Lin thought it absolutely neces- 
sary, as a matter of state policy, to stop the traffic. A 
Chinese official is the Joseph Surface of diplomacy ; be his 



174 CHINA. 

deeds good or evil, they are certain to be concealed under a 
mass of fine sentiments. 

In China every pragmatical pedant who has a certain 
literary degree has the privilege of memorializing the 
Emperor. I have waded through hundreds of these to find 
only those stupid platitudes, those trite commonplaces, those 
'■' hanalites sur la morale^'' as Hue says, which, like the 
maxims in poor Kichard's Almanack, pass for deep wisdom 
with the vulgar of all nations. The opium question, of 
course, produced a rank crop of these impertinences, and some 
were selected for publication in the Pekin Gazette. One of 
them is reprinted in the blue-book for 1840, and contains 
that rarest of all things in these memorials — a fact : — 

" From Fuhkien, Kwantung, Chekeing, Shantung, Yunnan, and. 
Kweicliow, memorials have been presented by the censors and other 
officers, requesting that prohibition should be enacted against the 
cultivation of the poppy and the preparation of opium ; but, while 
nominally prohibited, the cultivation has not been really stopped in 
those places. Of any of those provinces, except Yunnan, I do not 
presume to speak ; but of that portion of the country I have it in my 
power to say, that the poppy is cultivated all over the hills and in the 
open plain, and that the quantity of opium annually produced there 
cannot be less than several thousand chests ; and yet we do not see 
any diminution in the quantity of silver exported as compared with any 
previous period, while, on the other hand, the lack of the metal in 
Yunnan is double in degree what it formerly was. To what cause is 
this to be ascribed ? To what but that the consumers of the drug are 
very many, and that those who are choice and dainty with regard to 
its quality prefer always the foreign article ?" 

This testi&iony of Choo Tsun as to the cultivation of 
thousands of chests of native opium in one province alone 
was given in 1836, while the vermilion pencil was inditing 
heroics about the immorality of foreign opium-growers. 

I can add to this statement that the culture of opium 
certainly is not confined to the province of Yunnan. Any 
one who penetrates into the amphitheatre of mountains 
which bounds the Ningpo plain will see valleys upon valleys 
of fine rich land covered with poppies. The official reports 
deplore this, but cannot stop it. The estimate is that 60,000 
chests of opium are annually grown in China. This opium 
is purer and stronger than the Indian opium, but for want 



THE NATIVE CHDv^ESE OPIUM. 175 

of skill in the preparation, and patience in keeping, it has an 
acrid flavour. 

M. Hue tells us that native Chinese opium is not only 
cheap and abundant, but also that it is better than the 
Indian. According to this authority it is only the higher 
classes who, for fashion's sake, smoke the bad English opium : — 

" Depuis plusieurs anndes quelques provinces meridionales s'occupent 
avec beaucoup d'activite de la culture du pavot et de la fabrication de 
I'opium. Les marchands Anglais confessent que les produits Chinois 
sont d'excellente qualite, quoique cependant encore inferienrs a ceux 
qui viennent du Bengale ; mais ropium Anglais subit tant de falsifi- 
cations avant d'arriver dans la pipe du fumeur qu'il ne vaut plus, en 
reality celui que preparent les Chinois. Ce dernier quoique livre au 
commerce dans toute sa puret^, se donne a bas prix, et n'est consomm^ 
que par les fumeurs de bas etage. Celui des Anglais, malgr^ sa falsifi- 
cation, est tres cher, et reservd aux fumeurs de distinction." 

Fortunately for the opium- dealers these distinguished 
smokers are Yerj numerous. He says : — 

" Pendant notre long voyage en CMne, nous n'avons pas rencontr^ 
un seul tribunal oti on ne fumat I'opium ouvertement et impunement." 

M. Hue dismisses this subject with one of those fine 
passages which, in his works, are so seasonably interposed to 
sustain the robustness of our faith in the accuracy of his 
information and the soundness of his judgment, — 

" On pretend que le peuple de Londres et des autres villes manu- 
facturieres de I'Angleterre, s'est adonne, lui aussi, depuis quelques 
annees, a I'usage de I'opium pris en liquide ou en mastication. Cette 
nouveaute est encore peu remarquee, quoiqu'elle fasse, dit-on, des 
progrfes alarmants. Ce serait une chose a la fois curieuse et instructive, 
si un jour les Anglais dtaient obliges d'aller acheter I'opium dans les 
ports de la Chine. En voyant leurs navires rapporter du Celeste 
Empire cette substance veneneuse, pour empoisonner I'Angleterre, il 
serait permis de s'ecrier, ' Laissez passer la justice de Dieu ! ' " 

The English opium trade, even although Indian opium 
should happen (as M. Hue, some-^hat incorrectly, I fear^ 
states) to be consumed only by magistrates on the judgment- 
seat and other distinguished persons, is a great thorn in the 
side of the British missionary. The controversy which the 
Chinese politely evade finds exercise among the Christians. 
An English missionary related to me quite recently Low he 



176 CHINA. 

iad met and vanquislied a Portuguese priest, wlio confronted 
bim in hostile manner in the streets of a northern city. 
Having no European language in common, and Latin being 
found to be an inconvenient medium, they dropped fluently 
into the Shanghai dialect. The gaping Chinese stood round 
and wondered, while the priest accused the English minister 
of being about to teach the Chinese a modern heresy, only 
100 years old, invented by a wicked king and an abandoned 
woman ; and while the priest was in his turn twitted with 
teaching an idolatr}'- stolen from the temples of Buddha. 
We have all classes of missionaries here, except only high 
churchmen, whereof I have met none. The ordained clergy 
in China often abandon their prayer-book, and conduct their 
services in the Presbyterian form. Some of the sectarian 
ministers carry their Protestantism with a dauntlessness 
that makes us start or shiver. There was a reception-day 
some time since at the yamun of the taoutai of Shanghai 
city. The Poman Catholic bishop had just had his audience, 
and an uncompromising Protestant of an extreme sect took 
his place. Now, this taoutai had the reputation of being a 
clever, malicious, and sarcastic man, accustomed to gather 
all the European scandal of the settlement, and to cast it 
into the faces of the missionaries — Roman Catholic, Catholic, 
and Protestant. " The head man of your Christians is just 
gone out," maliciously remarked the taoutai. "Sir, he is 
not our head man. He is not a Christian at all ; he is an 
idolater ; he worships the cross." " And do not you ? " 
asked the innocent taoutai. " JSTo, I do not." " And yet 
if I were to lay the cross on the floor at your feet you durst 
not trample upon it ? " "I would," answered the unhesita- 
ting Christian missionary. Of course, there must be jealousies 
and difficulties and heartburnings among men holding such 
very different opinions. Even some Americans, of the more 
violently hostile sects, point out to the Chinese that the 
English are opium-dealers, suppressing the fact that American 
houses are quite as eager in disputing the profits of the trade. 
Sometimes it happens that in the midst of a missionary dis- 
course an old man comes forward (either spontaneously or at 
some one's suggestion), and tells the crowd what a good son 
he once had, and how that son kept him in comfort, but that 



THE OPIUM SMOKERS. 177 

he has lately taken to spend all Lis earnings in opium- 
smoking, and leaves his father unprovided for. The old 
gentleman wishes to know whether it is the countrymen of 
the " elder teacher " who sell that opium. We must imbue 
ourselves with the exaggerated notions which the Chinese 
have of the sacredness of parental despotism to fully under- 
stand the effect of such a question. If while a candidate was 
addressing the electors of the borough of Mainelaw, with 
their wives and daughters in general tea-party assembled, 
Mrs. Brown Jones Eobinson Smith were suddenly to appear 
leading in Mr. B. J. R. Smith, staggering in the last stage 
of maudlin tipsiness — if Mrs. Smith were then, addressing 
the candidate, and pointing to her sjDouse, to ask whether 
the report was true that he, Mr. Juniper, was the person 
who made and sold the liquid which had reduced Mr. Smith 
to the condition of a beast — and if the candidate, thus 
adjured, felt constrained to confess that he certainly was the 
proprietor of a rather extensive distillery, the interruption 
would not be more provoking than those which sometimes 
occur at Amoy or Shanghai. 

The English missionaries meet these things with a con- 
stancy almost as bold as the chronology of the Portuguese 
priest. They say that India is not England, but a country 
to which China is indebted for her two great curses — opium 
and Buddhism. As to its effect upon the conversion of the 
Chinese, the suggestion is simply absurd ; but it is a weak 
point in the armour of controversy, and our missionary 
countrymen feel it very bitterly. 

At Mngpo I accepted an invitation from the Rev. Mr. 
Russell, the Church of England missionary priest, and the 
Rev. Mr. Edkins, of the London Mission at Shanghai, to 
visit the opium-dens of Ningpo city. Commander Dew, of 
the Nimrod, and several of his of&cers accompanied us. I 
had seen the opium-eaters of Constantinople and Smyrna, 
and the hashish- smokers of Constantino, and I was prepared 
for emaciated forms and trembling limbs. I recollected 
buying a taboosh in the bazaars of Smyrna from a young 
Moslem whose palsied hand and dotard head could not 
count the coins I offered him. I recollected the hashish- 
smokers of Constantino, who were to be seen and heard 

N 



178 CHINA. 

every afternoon at the bottom of that abyss which yawns 
under the "Adultress's Rock," — lean,fleshless Arabs, smoking 
their little pipes of hempseed, chanting and swaying their 
skeleton forms to and fro, shrieking to the wild echoes of the 
chasm, then sinking exhausted under the huge cactus, — 
sights and sounds of saturnalia in purgatory. 

The Chinese exhibition was sufficiently disgusting, but was 
otherwise quite a failure. These opium-dens are ordinary 
Chinese cottages, with a room about twelve feet square, 
furnished with a bed, a table, and a sofa. In the first v/e 
entered, three men sat upon the bed and two upon the sofa. 
There was the opium-pipe, the lamp, and the small porcelain 
cup of treacly-looking opium. One of the customers takes 
the pipe and the lamp, then dips a pin into the opium, 
turns it round and round till he has the proper quantity of 
the jellified drug, inserts the pin in the pijje, applies the pipe 
to the flame of the lamp, and at the same time drav/s up the 
vapour by two or three long inhalations — not whiffs, for he 
draws it into his lungs — then he passes on the pipe, the 
opium being consumed, and gradually lets the vapour slowly 
return through his mouth and his nose. 

The members of this convivial society were good-humoured 
and communicative. One was a chair-coolie, a second was a 
petty tradesman, a third was a runner in a mandarin's 
yamun ; they were all of that class of urban population 
which is just above the lowest. They were, however, 
neither emaciated nor infirm. The chair-coolie was a sturdy 
fellow, well capable of taking his share in the porterage of a 
sixteen-stone mandarin ; the runner seemed well able to run ; 
and the tradesman, who said he was thirty- eight years old — 
say thirty-seven, for the Chinese commence to count their 
age nine months earlier than we do — was remarked by all 
of us to be a singularly young-looking man for that age. 
He had smoked opium for seven years. As we passed from 
the opium-dens we went into a Chinese tea-garden — a dirty 
paved court, with some small trees and flowers in flower-pots, 
— and a very emaciated and yawning proprietor presented 
himself. "The man has destroyed himself by opium- 
smoking," said Mr. E-ussell. The man, being questioned, 
declared that he had never smoked an opium-pipe in his 



COST OF OPIUM-SMOKING. 17i) 

life, — a bad shot, at wliicli no one was more amused than the 
rev. gentleman who fired it. 

I only take the experiment for what it is v/orth. There 
must be very many most lamentable specimens of the effects 
of indulgence in this vicious practice, although we did not 
happen to see any of them that morning. They are not, 
however, so universal, nor even so common, as travellers 
who write in support of some thesis, or who are not above 
truckling to popular prejudices in England, are pleased to 
say they are. 

But if our visit was a failure in one respect, it was fully 
instructive in another. In the first house we visited, no 
man spent on an average less than 80 cash a day on his 
opium-pipe. One man said he spent 120. The chair-coolie 
spends 80, and his average earnings are 100 cash a day. 
English physicians, unconnected with the missionary 
societies, have assured me that the coolie opium-smoker 
dies, not from opium, but from starvation. If he starves 
himself for his pipe, we need not ask what happens to his 
family. 

ISTo earthly power can stop opium-smoking in China ; but 
if the people of England are earnest in wishing to stop the 
English trade in it, nothing is easier than to do so by far 
less of self-sacrifice than the opium-smoker would be obliged 
to exercise. Let the old ladies give up tea and the youmg 
ladies give up silk, and the thing is done. If the Chinese 
had again to pay for opium in silver they would soon 
grow it all at home, and look sharp after the foreign 
smuggler. At present the trade is as open and as un- 
restrained in all the cities of China as the sale of hot-cross 
buns on Good Friday is in the streets of London. 

Those unfortunate fine sentiments of Mr. Commissioner 
Lin cost the Chinese treasury a very handsome source of 
revenue. "When the drain of sycee ceased, these sentiments 
became only expensive encumbrances. It is amusing to 
observe how delicately they have been dropped overboard. 

The North China Herald of the 27th of June, 1857, 
contains two proclamations from the authorities of Fuhkien 
and the prefects of Fuhchow. These authorities profess 
that they have discovered that " among the foreign imports 

N 2 



180 CHINA. 

there is an article called ' foreign medicine,' of which im- 
mense quantities are sold, and on which hitherto there has 
been no dut3^" They innocently remark that, " It appears 
that this foreign medicine is sold to the people as medicine, 
and is used for expelling epidemics ; so that it cannot be 
classed with rice, paddy, cloth, &c., which are of constant 
use. Therefore, in levying this duty on foreign medicine, 
we do not oppress the people." The proclamations declare 
that, " Hereafter this foreign medicine, when it has paid the 
duties, is to be regarded as a legal article of trade." The 
duties imposed are, that "every box of foreign medicine 
containing forty balls shall pay a duty of one dollar per 
ball " (that is, the Patna opium) ; " other kinds of foreign 
medicine in small balls [the Malwa opium] shall pay duty 
at the rate of four dollars per ten pounds." The proclama- 
tion ends thus : — 

" The high mihtary and civil authorities of the province have already 
memorialized the throne. Hereafter, when the duty on foreign 
medicine is paid, the trade is legal ; and at all the custom-houses the 
presentation of the proper certificate will secure immediate passage for 
the foreign medicine without the slightest opposition." 

The date of the second of these proclamations is the 7 th 
of June, 1857. 

At Shanghai there has been no formal proclamation ; but 
the same viceroy rules, and levies a duty of twenty-four 
taels a chest. 

At Ningpo a tax of twelve Shanghai dollars per chest 
has been established for some time, and the mandarins are 
now about to raise it to the Shanghai amount. I am told 
that it was originally proposed to levy this tax as an import 
duty ; but that the merchants refused to pay it, and 
threatened to retire to their depot ships again. In this I 
am inclined to think they were unwise. Opium might have 
been brought within the five per cent, of the "un- 
enamerated articles clause " of the treaty, and this vexed 
question thus settled for ever ; whereas the tax is now 
levied from the Chinese brokers, and is, of course, without 
limit. 

In the face of the present large returns from these opium 
duties — concerning the amount whereof Lord Elgin may, 



CUSTOM DUES UPON OPIUM. 181 

perhaps, be able to give tlie Emperor some information 
whicli has not yet reached him — there will be no difficulty in 
jDutting this part of our trade on a satisfactory treaty basis. 

Perhaps I have said too much about this topic ; but it 
must come into the new treaty, and there may be some few 
readers in England who may be willing to hear the question 
stated as I have endeavoured to state it — without the pre- 
judices either of a missionary or a merchant. 

One word upon a subject to which I shall probably not 
have occasion to recur. I have sometimes spoken untenderly 
of to])ics much cherished by some of our Protestant mission- 
aries. There is, however, no subscriber to the various bodies 
which send preachers forth who thinks more highly of the 
usefulness of these men than I do. I will not say that they 
are makincf sincere Chinese Christians, — those who say this 
must be either governed by a delusion or guilty of a fraud, — 
but they are doing the work which, if China is ever to be- 
come Christianized, must 2:)recede its conversion. They live 
among the Chinese • people, they speak their language, they 
are known to them by deeds of charity and beneficence ; 
their wives are the friends of the poor, friendless, Chinese 
women ; their cliildren prattle to the natives in their own 
tongue, and are the messengers of their parents in little 
offices of love. The merchants in China are almost univer- 
sally large-hearted and benevolent men j they will give 
largely, but they have not either time or taste for such 
offices as these ; nor would the wildest philanthropist expect 
it from them. Yet this must be done by somebody if China 
is to be opened. Even if I had no hope that the cold 
speculative systems of Laotze, Confucius, and Buddha could 
be overthrown, that those palaces of ice would some day 
melt before the fervid quickening fire of true religion, still 
I would say, " Plant missionary establishments in China ; but 
remember always that a fool, a bigot, or a firebrand can do 
more evil there than ten good men can repair." 



The reader who may haply have followed me through my 
discussion of the opium-trade will probably have long since 
forgotten that it came under our consideration only as one 
article of import. 



I8'2 CHINA. 

If we have to pay 15,000,000/. for tea and silk, and 
deliver only 7,000,000?. in opium and 1,500,000/. in Indian 
€otton, and 2,000,000/. in British manufactures, we have 
4,500,000/. still to make up. Of course, we try to do this 
as much as possible without putting our hands into our 
pockets. AYe bu}'- rice at Siam, and, trying to place some of 
our goods there in return for it, we trans-ship it to Canton, 
or to any other hungry and locust-infested province, whereof 
China always has several. We go into the Straits and buy 
or barter sharks' fins and birds' nests, putchuck and cutch, 
buffalo-horns and mother-of-pearl shells, and all such like 
Chinese delights, and we profier them in part payment. 
But there is still a large margin to fill up. No wonder, then, 
that in the first three months of this year, 1857, we were 
obliged to export 7,639,000 dollars in silver, or that the 
drain has since been going on with nndiminished strength. 

Moreover, we must remember that of the 8,500,000/. 
which we take in opium and cotton from India, we cannot 
pay for it all even by the thriving export trade to Calcutta, 
nor absorb quite all the balance in rent and in dividends 
upon East-India Stock. Some silver or gold must go there 
also. 

But another very serious inconvenience arises from this 
payment for tea and silk in silver bullion. Silver is not an 
article which, like birds' nests, the Chinese can make soup 
of, nor is it their custom to expend it greatly for articles of 
luxury. Their women wear bracelets and anklets of it, but 
the men prefer to gloat over it in the form of ingots. Now, 
according to laws from which even China cannot emanci- 
pate herself, it happens that as the rarity of an article of 
barter ceases so its commercial value diminishes. This is 
already taking place in China. Not only are the exchanges 
against us, but people who are paid their salaries here in 
silver find that the dollar, so dear to buy from England, is 
becoming daily less valuable in China. Some years ago a 
Carolus dollar could be bought at 45. 2d. English money, 
and when you had thus bought it you could change it for 
2,000 of the copper cash of the country. At the present 
day, partly by action of the exchanges, and partly because 
the people in the interior once had a superstitious con- 



CHINESE CURRENCY. 183 

fidence in tlie weight and purity of the Carolus dollar, and 
preferred it to any other medium, of commerce as the only 
foreign coin they knew — just as some of our country people 
prefer the notes of a neighbouring bank to Bank of England 
notes or sovereigns — a Carolus dollar costs us here 75. 
English money. When you have suffered this loss by the 
exchange, another loss comes upon you when you exchange 
it into the only currency of the country. Instead of getting 
2,000 cash for it, you have great difficulty in getting 1,200. 
This second loss arises partly from the country people 
having got over their inordinate love of Carolus dollars, 
chiefly from the diminished value of silver, and in a small 
degree from the increased scarcity of copper cash. This 
scarcity of cash also arises from the diminished value of 
silver. Immediately the relative value of silver and copper 
was disturbed, the Parsees found it profitable, notwith- 
standing the stringency of the Chinese prohibition, to ex- 
port the cash as metal. They are now working the same 
operations in gold-r-buying up all they can get and export- 
ing it to India. 

Thus it happens that a man who has a fixed income from 
England, instead of getting 2,000 cash for every 45. 2t^., 
only gets 1,200 cash for every 75., a difference so enormous 
that it would be incredible if every table of official figures 
did not prove the fact. 

Strange to say that merchants here draw no conclusions 
from these premises. Fortunately for himself, however, the 
merchant's optics are those of the lynx rather than those of 
the eagle. An extremely far-sighted commercial man must 
always run risk of bankruptcy, for the most absolutely cer- 
tain sequences are often the most uncertain in point of 
time. But as time is of the essence of commerce, your far- 
sighted merchant would be ruined while his certain sequence 
was still in sight. 

They see prices going up enormously, and, with occasional 
vibrations, still maintaining their advance. They look upon 
this as an unnatural state of things in the face of abundant 
silk seasons, and they refuse to buy. Undoubtedly they 
may thus temporarily reduce prices, for accumulated stocks 
must be sold ; but in the long run prices will continue to 



184: CHINA. 

advance in spite of them until they reach a point at which 
competition will stop the price, or rather the sale of China 
silk, and the price will check the consmnption of China tea, 
This may not be so very far distant, for, if my reasoning is 
correct, silver will become dearer in Europe just in propor- 
tion as it becomes cheaper in China. All the facts seem to 
point to this conclusion. The tael of silver, which has taken 
the place of the now nearly exploded Carolus dollar, is an 
ascertained weight of silver metal — not depending for ita 
value upon any adventitious and unreasonable preference, 
like the Carolus. This tael of silver was formerly worth 
2,000 copper cash, and is now only worth 1,100 ; but the 
Chinese producer reckons his expenditure and his returns 
only in copper cash. As silver becomes more plentiful its 
value in relation to copper cash goes on diminishing — it 
takes more silver every year to give to the peasant who 
grows silk or tea his remunerating amount of the only 
currency he knows. Again, notwithstanding the unusual 
necessity for bullion which the Chinese have experienced 
this year in order to pay for Indian rice, to make up the 
deficiency in their own crops, notwithstanding the large 
payments for Bengal cotton and the rise in opium of nearly 
100 per cent., the native bankers abound in money, and 
interest was never known to be so low. The recent fall in 
the rate of exchange upon England does not touch the argu- 
ment ; this is a merely temporary matter, occasioned partly 
by the large speculative exports of silver, and partly by 
the two great houses of Jardine and Dent having refrained 
from buying silk at the present dangerously high prices. 
Silver is, in China, not money, but merely merchandise, and 
as the stock grows greater so the value of any given quantity 
grows less. 

If I am right in this position, then, our British merchants 
in China must admit, what at present some of them are most 
unwilling or most careless to perceive, that it is vital to 
their well-being to attempt to push our manufactures into 
China. We may find a silver California, but, putting miracle 
aside, I can see no other remedy for the present unsatis- 
factory state of things — no other means whereby the export 
of tea and silk can go on — except the sending of cottons 



NO PEEJUDICE AGAINST EUROPEAN GOODS. 185- 

anci broadcloths and hardware and lace to China instead of 
bullion. 

Eeasons alleged for the Paucity os' BpwItish 
Exports. 

The reasons usually alleged are — 1, that the Chinese are 
not easily induced to adopt foreign fashions ; 2, that the 
Chinese are a manufacturing people ; 3, the disturbances 
caused by the rebellion j 4, the exactions of the Chinese 
custom-houses. 

All these difficulties exist, but they are individually much 
over-estimated, and they are in the aggregate quite insuffi- 
cient to account for the phenomenon. 

1st. That the Chinese are not easily induced to adopt 
foreign fashions. — This is true only to a very partial extent. 
You can't make a China-woman wear a Cranbourne-street 
bonnet, nor a coolie wear a pair of Stuart plaid trowsers ; 
they are even so bigoted as to consider that their narrow 
cottons, ten inches broad, are more conveniently made into 
their garments than your wide longcloths. They do not like- 
your flimsy cottons ; I have seen them take them between 
their fists, and rub the dressing out. At Ningpo the Chinese 
can buy the best grey shirtings at fivepence a yard, and 
they yet prefer to pay sixpence a yard for home-made 
cotton cloth not quite half the width. But this is not 
because they are insensible to the superior fineness of the 
English texture ; it is because they cannot afford to buy 
the British material. The home-made cloth is of thrice the 
substance, and will last a Chinaman for at least two years. 
The British calico, washed in Chinese fashion by beating 
between stones, would wear out in six weeks. Depend upon 
it that a Chinaman is, of all human creatures, the most shrewd 
in all matters of economy ; provide him with a cheaper and 
better thing than he can make at home, and he will buy it. 
Of course you must give him what he wants. If Yung 
A'Lung, the tailor of Canton, were to send a circular to the 
deputy-lieutenants of England, telling them that he had sent 
to England rich mandarin dresses much handsomer than the 
stift' clothes which they wear on grand occasions, and inviting 
them to go to court a la Chinoise, we should scarcely think 



186 CHINA. 

that Yung A'Limg had made a wise or profitable con- 
signment. Yuno- A'Liinc; is not such a fool. He sends us 
cheap gold lace of the proper width and quality. Surely 
Manchester can produce a piece of strong thick cotton cloth 
ten or twelve inches wide and put it down at Shanghai at 
less than sixpence a yard ? 

At this moment narrow thick calicoes, which one of the 
Hongkong houses had the wit to order from England, are 
selling at very remunerative prices. There is also some 
trade doing in cotton brocades, made in imitation of the 
Chinese silk brocades, of the same flowered pattern, and 
dyed to the same colours. These are laid down at 
Shanghai at 3 J taels; they there readily fetch 5 taels, 
and I am told that the Chinese merchants find a ready 
market for them up in the tea country at 13 taels. No 
doubt if the mandarins find this out there will be a 
tremendous squeeze upon the Chinaman's profit of 8 taels 
somewhere. 

But it is a mistake to suppose that the Chinese are not 
fond of Western fashions. In going through the house of 
the richest merchant in Ningpo I was surprised to notice 
that, except in the servants' room, there was not a bit of 
Ningpo furniture in the house. The furniture was all of 
Chinese manufacture, but it was of simple fashion, without a 
mandarin, or a dragon, or a piece of inlaid ivory about it. I 
recognized several articles as having been not very success- 
fully imitated from drawings in the Illustrated News — a 
paper which a Chinaman is always anxious to beg, borrow, 
or steal. The highest ambition of a Chinaman is to have an 
English watch. A pirate, who took a missionary and set him 
free, risked his life next day by calling on him at his house. 
He produced the reverend gentleman's watch, and the rightful 
owner thought the repentant man had come to return it. 
Not so ; the dandy Cantonese pirate had come to beg the 
missionary to teach him how to wind up that watch. 
Looking-glasses also are a luxury to which the Chinese take 
with great avidity. They are superseding the old metal 
mirror wherever the owner can afibrd the exchange. An 
English knife is a most acceptable present to a Chinaman, 
and a telescope is a treasure to covet through a life. He loves 



BLUE COTTON BUEECHES. 187 

cberry brandy and delights in champagne, and many a 
Shangtung man comes out smart on l^ew Year's Day in a 
camlet coat (of Chinese fashion) and brass buttons from 
Birmingham. But why insist upon a Chinaman changing 
his habits to become your customer 1 Every morning 
throughout the Chinese empire there are 300,000,000 of blue 
cotton breeches drawn over human legs. Men, women, and 
children alike wear them. They are loose and shapeless. 
There are not five difierent patterns and five difierent sizes 
all through the empire. My coolie says that his cost him 
200 cash, but that he is obliged to have a thick quilted pair 
in the winter, which costs him 1,000 cash. Here is scope for 
Manchester energy ! It is not a changeable fashion, not a 
perishable production ; it is inseparable from the funda- 
mentals of Chinese society. Depend upon it, if you can make 
these blue breeches as strong as they are now made, and 
cheaper than they are now sold, the Chinaman will gradually 
surrender to you the trade, grow less cotton and more rice. 
So of other articles of dress. On the 17th of September a 
north-west wind reduced the thermometer to the inclement 
wintry position of 74° Fahrenheit. That morning the 
Chinese population of Shanghai was completely changed. 
The shorn skull, which had defied the fierce summer sim, 
was covered from the cold by a small warm cap or a Chinese 
bonnet. Some of the chair-coolies had even covered their 
legs. But every man of decent station appeared in a thick 
loose dark-coloured tunic or cape. The shape and fashion 
varied only from the cape to the tunic, but the material was 
very various. The great majority were satisfied with a thick 
dark-blue cotton cloth, but many wore woollen cloth ; some 
luxuriated in quilted silk, and a few came forth in capes of 
black velvet. Do you think that these sensitive celestials 
ever asked, when they bought their winter's garb, in what 
country's looms the fabric was spun 1 Not they. They 
chose the cheapest and the best. 

If Messrs. Moses and Son had been at Shanghai with a 
proper staff of Chinese poets, and a really good assortment 
of these loose Chinese coats, fresh from the Minories, they 
might have sold hundreds of them in Shanghai alone on 



188 CHINA. 

that severely wintry morning when the thermometer stood 
only a little above summer heat. 

2. The Chinese are a manufacturing people. This is not 
true in the sense in which it is used. Of course, they obtain 
a produce by hand-labour, and so did Adam when he delved, 
and Eve when she spun. But in a competitive sense the 
Chinese have no manufactures. Their handloom is a 
miserable thing. Their shuttles pass to and fro at a very 
languid pace. They can produce small results with great 
ingenuity. There is a working weaver who imitates with 
w^onderful art all our English ribands and fringes, and who 
is kept in constant employ by European ladies to match 
English fabrics. English ladies, who wear out their father's 
horses and carriages, and the patience of polite shopmen in 
matching twopenny ribands for dear country friends, would 
find him invaluable. But he could not produce twenty 
yards of silk at any reasonable price. At Ningpo there is 
a needle manufactory, where you may see men grinding 
long steel bars to the necessary fineness by rubbing them 
with their hands upon a stone, then notching them at the 
required lengths, breaking them off, and filing the points, 
when little boys take np the wondrous tale and drill the 
eye in each individual needle. They say that English needles 
rust in the moist hand of a Chinaman, but that these stumpy 
substitutes do not. So you may see them in the same place, 
hammering out nails and tacks, probably made from English 
iron, steel, and tin ; for much more than a million of dollars^ 
Avortli of these metals is annually exported from Great 
Britain to China. Surely these handloom weavers, and 
needle-grinderS; and nail-grinders, ought not to be competi- 
tors with our English manufacturers. I have not seen the 
porcelain manufactures ; they are out of European reach, 
but they retain the remains of an ancient excellence ; and 
there is a coolness about the lip of a Chinese cup, when 
nearly filled with hot tea, which proceeds from some pecu- 
liarity in the material. Still, however, the Potteries could 
utterly drive all the commoner sorts of Chinese crockery 
out of their own market by underselling them enor- 
mously. 



COMMERCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE REBELLION. 189 

China is oiot a mannfacturing nation, whate\^er she may 
become when her intercourse ^Yith the West is perfect, and 
her enormous coal-fields opened. She has at present a hap- 
pier destiny than the factory and the forge. 

" Bella gereTit alii, sed tu felix Austria nube." 

To manufacture is our necessity, to produce is China's privi- 
lege. In those enormous plains where her industrious rivers, 
labouring from times even before her chronology, have 
brought down the vegetable soil of all Central Asia, flat- 
tened it out conveniently, and located it under a stimulating 
climate — in those enormous plains let her produce, with well- 
remunerated toil, her rice, her maize, her wheat, her pulse, 
her cotton, and her silk. On tliese gentle uplands, which 
were islets when the Yangtse and the Hoang-ho were young, 
let her cultivate her tea. Let her still sacrifice the beauty 
of her higher hills to grave utility, carve them into terraces, 
divide them into small oblongs, cover them with ever-recur- 
ring crops of various vegetables, till greens, and yellows, and 
browns of every shade would seem to say that the hills of 
China, like the sails of her river junks, are made of patch- 
work. Be it our humble task to work up her produce into 
fabrics ; to supply local deficiencies in her favourite food, 
and to clothe with blue integuments the nether portions of 
her teeming people. This is the true interest of the two 
•countries, and any little gentle compulsion tending thither- 
wards v/ill be to the ultimate good of both. 

3. The disturbances caused by the rebellion. This is a 
really important difficulty, and must be in some way re- 
moved. I hope our commercial men do not propose to 
themselves to postpone active business in China until the 
roads shall be macadamized, gaslights established in every 
city, and rural police walk up and down the banks of every 
canal. China always has been and always must be a country of 
frequent revolutions, secret societies, and powerful robbers. 
In all former times, whenever some great event lights up 
for a moment the historic gloom in which the common 
people live and suffer, we find all these influences strongly 
working. Chinese society then comes out like that of a drop 
of stagnant water seen through a microscope. Water-lions are 



190 CHINA. 

devouring the smaller ugly things, which in their turn are 
feeding upon the still smaller fry, and thus downwards to 
infinity. In 1224 years China, so famed in the West for 
the solidity of her institutions, has undergone fifteen changes 
of dynasty. So ancient is this course of turmoil that the 
oldest known vase, attributed by Chinese writers to a period 
long before the birth of Christ, bears upon it as an inscrip- 
tion an aspiration for "Ten thousand years' rest from violence 
and troubles." The founder of the Ming dynasty in 1368 
was a servant at a Buddhist monastery, who joined a vagrant 
band of marauders. Whenever anything occurs of historic 
importance, we always find that some bandit had a hand in. 
it. The land was always full of them. When the Tartars 
possessed themselves of China, one of these bandit chiefs 
had just possessed himself of Pekin, and the last of the 
Ming race had just hanged himself In 1635 the interior 
contained eight separate rebel armies, each with its leader, 
its set of grievances, and its appetite for plunder. It was a 
pirate who drove the Dutch out of Formosa j the son of a 
" celebrated pirate " who helped the Cantonese to defend 
their city against the Tartars ; and it was a pirate who the 
other day destroyed the Portuguese piratical fleet at Ningpo. 
In all ages and at all times China has been coasted by pirates 
and traversed by bands of robbers. 

This must be so. China is a thickly peopled country, 
peculiarly subject to inundations and failure of crops, with a 
feeble government and no poor-laws. There must be always 
bands of hungry men in such a land. They execute 
10,270 criminals in ordinary years (the present average is 
more than ten times that number), but this does not fill the 
bellies of those who remain. Every part of China is rife 
with " dangerous classes." These famishing wolves lurk in 
every village. It was not the British who destroyed Che- 
kiang, or the other large cities which were sacked and gutted 
while the conquerors looked on, allowing the " poor China- 
men" to carry off their goods. It was the dangerous 
classes, who came forth to plunder and finish up with fire. 
They' understand this so well in China, that the other day 
at Chusan, when the military had made up their minds to 
mutiny, they gave public notice of the fact, in order that ail 



THE DANGEROUS CLASSES. 191 

the shopkeepers might shut and barricade their shops, and 
in order to prevent the demonstration being taken advantage 
of by these dangerous classes for purposes of pkmder. When 
I was at Mngpo I used to watch these houseless vagabonds. 
There is a large colony of them always located in a huge 
ruinous square tower over the Salt Gate, In early morning 
I used to sit upon one of the two guns of Ningpo and look 
through the broken walls upon the filthy scene within that 
tower. There was always a store of stolen dogs tied up, 
and one of these was killed for the morning meal. Then 
they separated for the day ; to return at what hour of night 
I know not, for I took care not to make one of that party 
after dark. There was no police to keep them in order ; 
but, probably, if their depredations had become quite 
insufferable, the taoutai would have called out a certain 
number of soldiers and exterminated them, or the trades- 
men would have banded together and destroyed them. The 
Chinese are a race of co-operative habits. They form socie- 
ties to rob, societies to resist robbery, and societies for all 
or any fanciful object. But these societies all have one ten- 
dency — to " squeeze " the non-members. From the Triad 
Society, which was at the bottom of the present rebellion, 
to the Tailors' Union at Hongkong, the rules and regula- 
tions of which have just been published in the North China, 
Herald, all have the same practical object in view. The 
"Teente Brotherhood," the "Triads," the "Heaven and 
Earth Society," the " Queen of Heaven's Company," the 
" Flood Family," the " Pure Tea Set," are all obnoxious to 
the general description given in a memorial published in the 
Fekin Gazette : — 

" They carry oflF persons in order to extort ransoms for them ; they 
falsely assume the characters of police officers ; they build fast boats 
professedly to guard the grain-fields, and into these they put from ten 
to twenty men, who cruise along the rivers, violently plundering the 
boats of travellers, or forcibly carrying off the wives and daughters of 
the tanka boat people. The inhabitants of the villages and hamlets 
fear these robbers as they would tigers, and do not offer them any 
resistance. The husbandman must pay these robbers a charge, else as 
soon as his crop is ripe it is plundered, and the whole field laid bare. 
In the precincts of the metropolis they set fire to places during the 
night, that, under pretence of saving and defending, they may plunder 
and carry off." 



192 CHINA. 

In sucli a country the merchant must make up his mind 
to run some risk ; but still this rebellion is something more 
than a normal element of Chinese society. It is not a general 
insecurity, it is a positive stoppage. It is an aneurism in the 
great artery of China. It is a stoppage of the Yang-tse-kiang. 

If the rebels had taken Pekin and changed the dynasty, 
it had been a matter of no importance to us. If they had 
taken Kwangtung, we might have treated with them. But 
they have located themselves in a position where they can 
do us nothing but positive mischief. They do not move. 
They neither grow into a power, nor sink into a rabble. So 
far as appearances show, the siege of Nankin may last for 
ten years longer. The rumour of to-day is contradicted by 
the not more certain intelligence of to-morrow. Nothing is 
certain, except that so long as the people inside can get food, 
and so long as the army outside get their pay, nothing will 
be done. 

But something must be done in the interest of commerce. 
All the British navy could ride in that deep, wide river, 
which rolls by Nankin. There are two convenient islands 
there — the Gold and Silver Islands — which might be gar- 
risoned by the treaty jDowers for the protection of neutral 
vessels, until these troubles are over ; and the presence of a 
couple of steamers, such as the Inflexible and the Ftiry, 
■with a gunboat or two, to act as runners higher up, would 
not be too great a price to pay for security upon the great 
trunk-road of China. I don't think there would be any 
objection urged at Pekin against this course, and as to the 
rebels, Mr. Medhurst, who is now in England, and who 
made some reports to the Government on the subject, can 
tell you, if he pleases, what manner of men they are, and 
what title they have to our sympathies. 

4. The fourth and most emphatic reason given for the 
.absence of progress in the sale of British produce, is the 
large protective duties levied at the custom-houses. 

I came out to China strongly imbued with the conviction, 
so universal in England, that the inland custom-houses shut 
in our British produce v/ithin a narrow area of coast country. 
1 found the same belief prevalent in Hongkong and shared 
by our English officials. 



CHINESE CUSTOM-HOUSES. 193 

Mr. Rutherford Alcock, who in 1848 made some inquiries 
in reference to these inland or transit duties as they bear 
upon the commerce of Shanghai, could only discover that 
they were constantly alleged as a cause of delay and diffi- 
culty in bringing the produce to that port, and that they 
had been found a serious impediment to the ready circula- 
tion of our goods beyond Soochow, so much so that the tea- 
merchant would at once get rid of the longcloths he had 
taken in exchange, and submit to a loss of twenty or thirty 
per cent., rather than incur the delay, trouble, and risk of en- 
deavouring to carry them with him into the interior. " In 
truth," he remarks, " the port of Shanghai is only open to 
trade so far as the inner cordon of custom-houses are per- 
meable and allow ingress to our goods." 

ISTo doubt the custom-houses of Hangchow, known as the 
Pihsin Kwan, and of Soochow, two of the largest trading 
cities in the empire, are so placed as to be capable of inter- 
cepting nearly the whole of the imports and exports of 
Shanghai, with the exception of silk, upon which are accu- 
mulated on its arrival at that port the triple duties of the 
Pihsin, the Taeping, and the Kan custom-houses. This is 
the chain it would have had to pass, had its destination been 
Canton ; and the triple duties are consolidated at Shanghai 
in order that the barbarians may gain nothing by having a 
new shipping-port nearer to the raw produce. 

This arrangement was in accordance with the edict pub- 
lished in the Pehin Gazette in September, 1844 : — 

''The amount of fixed duties to be sent to the capital by the Canton 
maritime custom-house was 899,064 taels ; and besides a surplus of 
about 1,000 to 40,000 taels. However, since now the trade will be 
carried on at the other four ports, the receipts at Canton will fall 
short of that sum, and therefore Foochow and the other ports must, 
after having realized their respective quotas, make up the deficit at 
Canton." 

But inasmuch as the trade of Shanghai was for the last 
six months £14,990,000, and as Shanghai alone now returns 
to the Chinese treasury more than 2,000,000 of taels, all 
difficulty on this score has ceased. 

Again, the edict of 1844 provides that, — 

" The duty on raw silk, now fixed at ten taels per picul, is less than 
O 



194 



CHINA. 



it was formerly ; and the five ports being now open, merchants will go 
with this article to the nearest market. But they must make up the 
loss of the transit duties, which otherwise would have been paid if they 
had proceeded to Canton, in whatsoever port they sell their cargo." 

There is a similar provision as to tea and wrought silk. 

Now, what are these duties ? This question is one which 
engages the most anxious attention of the English com- 
mercial houses both here and in China. I have obtained a 
translation of the tariff of legal charges, and it will be seen 
that these are not exorbitant. 



Taepingkwan. Pihsinlcwan. 

T. m. c.c. T. m. c. 0. 
0027 6-10 0008 
0042 0040 
0027 6-10 0040 



4 
3 6 4 
2 8 1-3 



" Transit Duties paid at the Custom-houses of Kan, Taeping, and Pihsin, 
on goods that are going dozvn to Canton, or thence transported to the 
Northern Provinces. 

(Extracted from the " Hoopootsihle," 30th and 31st vols., a work on 
the revenues, published by Imperial authority.) 

EXPORT. 
Kankwan. 
T. m. c. c. 

Alum, per 100 catties 8 3-10 

Aniseed star, ditto 4 2 

Arsenic, ditto 2 6 3-10 

Bambo screens and bamboo ware of 

all kinds, ditto — 

Camphor, ditto 0105 

Capoor catchery, ditto . . . . — 

Cassia, ditto 3 5^ 

China root, ditto 3 5 1-5 

Copper ware, pewter ditto, &c. ditto 9 1 9-10 

Cubebs, ditto . . 18 7 7-10 

Galingal ditto 1 7 6-10 

Gambog-e, ditto 3 5^ 

Grass cloth, all kinds, per piece .. 5 9 l- 10 

Hartall, per 100 catties .. .. 4 5 9 6-10 

Lead (white lead), ditto .. .. — 

Mats (straw, rattan, bamboo, &c.) 

ditto 0026 3-10 

Musk, per catty 9 1 9 1-10 

Nankeen and cotton cloth, of all 

kinds, per 100 catties .. .. 5 2^ 

Rhubarb, ditto 2 3.^ 

Silk, raw, first quality, ditto . . . . 10 

Coarse, or refuse silk, ditto .. .. 4 5 9 6-10 
Silk, piece goods, ribands, thread, 

&c 0919 1-10 

Middling raw silk, ditto . . . . — 

Silk and cotton mixtures, silk and 

woollen mixtures, and goods of 

such classes, per piece . . . . — 7 2 4 

Soy, per 100 catties 2 6 2 6-10 00276-10 

Tea, coarse, ditto 7 8 8-10 4 2 

per 10 baskts. per loO catts. 

Tea, fine, ditto 3 9 410 76 

Chekeang Teas. 

Termillion, per 100 catties .. .. 0525 2- 10 1446 



2 

1 5 

2 

3 3 



2 5 



6-10 



6-10 
4-10 
8 10 



4 



1 4 
3 



1 7 

4 2 

5 5 

2 7 610 

3 2 

6 4 



3 14 2 
0724 



4 
14 



4 
0600 
4 
4 
13 e.lOf 
2i^ 
0100' 
13 6 



13 6 

2 5 6-10 
4 
8 5 7 3-5 
0640 

14 7 2 
6 8 



12 
4 
4 2 

per 100 catts. 



13 6 



CHINESE TARIFF. 



195 



IMPORTS. 

Kankwan. 

T. m. c. c. 

Assafoetida, per 100 catties .. .. i 7 5 g^ 

Beeswax, ditto 0393 9-10 

Betelnut, ditto 1 7 6-] 

Bicho de Mar, ditto 3 5 2-10 

Birds' nests, ditto 117 2 7-10 

Camphor (Malay), per catty . . . . 9 2 

Cloves, per 100 catties 2 3 4 6-10 

Carnelian beads, ditto 5 9 

Cotton, ditto — 

Cotton manufactures of all kinds, 

whethercoarseorfine, per 10 pieces 10 

Cow bezoar, per catty 117 2 7-10 

Cutch, per 100 catties 14 4-5 

Elephants' teeth, ditto 2 3 4 3-5 

Gold and silver thread, per catty . . 2 6 2 3-5 

Gum Benjamin, per 100 catties .. 14 8 

Olibanum, ditto — 

Myrrh, ditto 2 3 4 3-5 

Horns, unicorns' or rhinoceros, per 

100 catties 1750 

Quicksilver, ditto 2 3 4 3-5 

Nutmegs, ditto 0100 

Pepper, ditto 0351 9-10 

Putchuck, ditto 2 3 4 3-5 

Rattans, ditto 4 9 9-10 

Rose maloes, ditto .. ' .. .. 9 3 8 4-10 

Sharks' fins, ditto 5 8 7-10 

Smalts, ditto 6 5 6:^ 

Ebony, ditto 9 3 4-5 

Sandalwood, ditto 5 8 6^ 

Sapanwood, ditto 14 2-5 

Woollen manufactures, per piece . . 2 

Narrow woollens, per chang of 141 

inches 0100 

Dutch camlets, ditto 2 

Camlets, ditto 0200 

Woollen yam, per 100 catties. . . . 3 14 2 



Taepingkwan. 
T. m. c. c. 
14 4 6 

4 2 

117 

1 1 1 G 
3 14 2 
0617 



14 8 
1116 

18 3 

14 4 6 

15 

3 6 7 

3 6 7 

6 8 4 

14 4 6 

14 4 4 

18 3 

2 5 9 

3 6 6 

4 2 

8 3 4 
0117 

14 4 6 

2 5 9 

4 2 

2 



Pihsinkwan, 
T. m. c. c. 
4 

4 
4 
1360 
1360 
2 



1-5 







5 5 
2 4 
2 
10 
2 4 4-5 
2 

2 

13 6 
13 6 
2 3 4 3-5 
2 
2 
0016 

4 

2 
2 
2 
Olio 2-5 
per 1 Chang'. 

01106-5 
110 2-5 
110 2-5 
2 4 4-5 



I am informed upon the best authority to be obtained 
upon such matters, but not implicitly to be credited, that 
this tariff has never been repealed or varied. The question 
rem^ains whether its provisions are evaded. The foreign 
merchants think that practically the tariff is a dead letter — 
that the mandarins, having to deal with Chinamen, take 
exceptions to the terms of the catalogue, and say that the 
cottons mentioned are Chinese, and not foreign cottons. 

Such an interpretation would be absurd upon the face 
of the document ; but between a mandarin and a Chinaman 
might makes right, and such things may take place. 

I have no doubt that this does often occur ; I am sure it 
may occur. I am certain, also, that there are only two 

o 2 



196 CHINA. 

remedies for it — a proper treaty provision as to duties upon 
all foreign mercliandise (levied at the ports), and a power of 
free transit in China to all British subjects furnished with 
proper credentials. 

But when I go a step further, and am called upon to say 
whether these exactions are so exorbitant and so common 
that they now operate as an absolute prohibition to the 
circulation of British goods, I must abandon my precon- 
ceived opinions and recant much that I have said in earlier 
letters. I do not think this is so. A man who travels in 
China to study the people, their institutions, and their 
manners, must not pride himself on his consistency. He 
travels and he inquires in order that he may change his 
mind, and I think I have seen good reason to believe that 
this custom-house prohibition is very much over-estimated. 

In the first place, I have circulated questions in Chinese 
among Chinese merchants, to all which I have received the 
most incongruous and unsatisfactory answers. From these 
I can draw no other conclusion than that the tariff is not 
much looked to, but that there is a general " squeeze " (it is 
the universal Chinese word, and I must use it) upon all the 
transported articles, without any reference to what country 
the goods come from, and that the amount of the squeeze 
depends upon the power of the mandarin's screw and the 
squeezability of the merchant. I have one instance, and 
only one, before me, in which a merchant sent English goods 
up to Soochow for sale there, and when (on account of 
markets rising at Shanghai) he wanted to get them back, 
he was asked to pay charges amounting to twenty per cent., 
and he was told that this was for duties paid at Soochow. 

In this case either the agent was a rogue, or the screw 
had been tv/isted very tight. 

But in the common course of commerce this cannot so 
liappen. I will state my reasons. 

I have had opportunities of studying Ningpo more care- 
fully than any other Chinese city. I know from the 
consular returns that direct imports from England to 
l^Tingpo there were none ; that the reshipments from 
Shanghai consisted only of an inconsiderable quantity of 
cotton shirtings, no woollens, no printed goods, some metal, 



ARE THERE DIFFERENTIAL DUTIES? 197 

and a few birds' nests, and other Straits j^roduce of about 
equal importance. Yet, to ray surprise, I found Ningpo 
full of English goods. There were great quantities of cloth 
from Leeds, cotton velvets in some variety, bales of " do- 
mestics," counters full of long ells, and Spanish stripes in 
much abundance, I was curious to know where all these 
came from, and, to my utter astonishment, was told that 
they all came from Soochow. All these goods therefore 
must have passed through that terrible custom-house at 
Soochow. Yet the owners of these goods must have had 
the option of transporting them direct from Shanghai, with 
no intervening custom-house, by sea. The only reason for 
passing them through Soochow was the mercantile facilities 
of that great mart. In every other respect the trans-shipment 
by sea would have been less expensive. I think this fact is 
decisive that the exactions at the Soochow custom-house 
could not have been very great. I took great pains to 
verify what the Ningpo shopkeepers told me, and there was 
no second opinion upon the matter ; and I was referred to 
a consular report of 1846 (which I shall hereafter quote), 
showing that this system is at least ten years old. The 
consular returns for 1856 are in themselves a conclusive 
corroboration. I may add that I bought a ball of English 
sewing cotton at Ningpo for four cash — rather less than a 
farthing. 

We must not over-estimate these facts. They only prove 
that these custom-houses do not always heavily mulct 
English goods, and that they are not the closed barrier 
which they have been supposed to be. The custom-houses 
are not the cause why English goods do not permeate the 
country, but still English goods do not make their way 
beyond a certain distance from the five ports. My expe- 
rience merely shows that the importance of these custom- 
houses is exaggerated, not that they are never an impedi- 
ment. 

I must in candour add that I have been informed that 
the distinction between barter and cash prices has, within 
the last two years, almost disappeared, and that some 
■woollens and shirtings are transshipped to Ningpo in native 
vessels. The first fact only strengthens my conclusion as to 



198 CHmA. 

the small effect of the Soochow custom-house ; the second is 
too unimportant to affect the argument. 

I have now examined the four reasons usually given in 
England for the unsatisfactor}?- condition of our export trade 
to China. They whose interest in the subject, or whose 
great patience, has enabled them to accompany me in this 
investigation, will, I hope, agree in my conclusion that these 
causes are insufficient to account for the effects in the mag- 
nitude in which we see them. I now proceed to point out 
some other causes which, as I think, exercise a more impor- 
tant influence. 

I must divide these reasons also into four classes : — 
1, that we are beaten by fair competition in the Chinese mar- 
kets ; 2, ignorance of British manufacturers as to the require- 
ments of China ; 3, that British exports are an unpopular 
branch of commerce with British merchants ; and, 4, that 
the country is not open to our merchandise. 

Three of these reasons will, I fear, not be popular either 
in England or in China. I must defend them as shortly as 
I can in the order in which I have propounded them. 

1. You are beaten by fair competition in the Chinese 
markets. 

The Americans beat you in drills and sheetings. At 
Shanghai, in 1856, the imports were 221,716 pieces of 
American drills, against 8,745 English ; and 14,420 of 
American sheetings, against 1,240 English. The reason 
given for this is that in these heavy goods the labour is in 
small proportion to the cost of the raw material, and the 
producer of the raw material must have the advantage. 
This may be so ; I only chronicle the fact that we are beaten 
by fair competition. 

In woollen goods you sustain close rivalry with the Ger- 
mans and the Russians. At Hongkong itself I found that 
the table-covers were almost universally of German manu- 
facture. At Ningpo I examined a great many pieces of 
cloth of different manufactures. There was a low quality 
cloth of Leeds manufacture, which was 1,437 cash, or about 
8s. a yard; a Saxony superfine, also of low quality and also 
of Leeds manufacture, 1,757 cash, or about lOs. 6d., a yard. 
These were a yard and a half wide. There was a narrower 



PRICE OF ENGLISH GOODS. 199 

English cloth of better quality and substance (extra super- 
fine), which was 2,965 cash, or about I8s., a yard. But 
there was also a strong thick Russian cloth, which was two 
yards wide (wanting two inches), and which was sold for 
2,216 cash, or 135. 6cl. a yard. The Bussian, therefore, 
taking the width into consideration, was about 35. a yard 
dearer than the worst of the English, about the same as the 
English second best, and not much more than one-half the 
price of the best English quality. 

The Chinaman prefers the best English, but he cannot 
afford it, and buys it in small quantities. Next to that he 
prefers the Russian, for it is stout and serviceable, and he 
says in his native idiom, although it " hairs" (roughens) easier 
than the best English, it does not so soon do so as the inferior 
English articles. The great bulk of the cloth sold to the 
Chinese, therefore, is Russian. 

I am, of course, aware that the Russian cloths are sold 
cheap, because they are given in barter for teas, which are 
l^laced against them at unnatural prices. The consequence 
is that the tea-consumer in Russia pays a bounty upon the 
import of Russian cloths into China. This, however, only 
accounts for the fact — it does not weaken it. iSTo matter 
how, it is sufficient for us that the Russian beats us in the 
Chinese market. 

The Chinese also used to beat us in cottons exported to 
their northern provinces. The failure of the cotton crop has 
given us just at present rather a monopoly of the market in 
Shantung, Shinkiang, and Corea, but with a good crop of 
cotton in China we shall probably lose this again, and be 
undersold by homespun goods. The profits made upon these 
exports by Chinese houses are very great, and it is not an 
unimportant affair, for the sales are 6,000,000 dollars 
annually. I believe that if we could lay our goods down in 
those provinces without the intervention of the more 
southern Chinamen we should be able to maintain our pre- 
sent position, and do a large trade in those provinces which 
are too far north for the growth of native cotton. ^ 

If we are undersold, it is of no use to cry out ; there is an 
end of the matter. If Leeds cannot send thick serviceable 
cloth to China cheaper than Russia can, and if Manchester 



200 CHINA. 

cannot make cotton clotli of a given quality cheaper than 
the old woman at the door of a Chinese cottage can, we may 
as well shut up shop. Manchester and Leeds ought not to 
be beaten in any of these matters, and that they are is, I 
believe, simply the result of ignorance at home of Chinese 
wants and habits. 

2. This brings me to my second heading, which, I think, 
after the instances given in this paper, I need not now 
labour. No doubt there are men in China who liave a 
knowledge of the Manchester trade, and who can calculate 
for you how much the experiment would cost of setting up 
a few looms to spin narrow widths. But there is no spirit 
of inquiry abroad, no energy at work, no notion of distract- 
ing the eye for a moment from watching those eternal 
shirtings, no thought whether you cannot make better shift 
with some other class of goods. Manchester made a great 
blind effort when the ports were opened, and that effort 
failed ; since then she has fallen into an apathy, and trusts 
to the chapter of accidents. 

3. Intimately connected with the last is my third propo- 
sition, that British exports are an unpopular branch of 
commerce with British merchants in China. 

Now, I should be the most ungrateful of men if I were 
to say anything depreciatory of the British merchants in the 
five ports. I am indebted to them for all I know upon the 
subjects whereon I write. I have gone to them, almost at 
all hours, when difficulties vexed me or figures came out 
with inconsistent results ; and even from the busiest of them 
at the busiest times I have always obtained the frankest 
information and access to all the statistics which their offices 
afford. I have been " a neutral power" here, from wliom no 
one had any trade secrets. But I am not driven even to 
say, " Amicus Plato, magis arnica Veritas." I say no more 
than they themselves would say quite frankly and quite 
openly. There are some houses which pay a certain atten- 
tion to cottons and woollens, bnt the largest British houses 
in China care very little about British exports. Talk to 
them of the transit duties upon tea or silk, or of the import 
duty upon opium, and you will be certain of an animated 
discussion or a very warm expression of opinion. S'peak to 



THE BRITISH I3IP0RT TRADE. 201 

them of the Pihsing K-^^an, and show them how little pro- 
gress is made with British goods, and they give you in an 
ofF-hand way the same reasons you have heard in England. 
It is too hot to rush about China. The fact is, this business 
is neither pleasant nor profitable. These men come out here 
to make fortunes in from five to seven years, not to force 
English calicoes up into remote places. Their work is to 
buy Chinese produce. If the English manufacturer wants 
his work done, they will do it for him, as it comes in their 
way. But if he wants extraordinary exertion, carefully 
collected information, and persevering up-country enterprise 
—and this is what he does v^ant — he must do it himself. 

I will show why this British import business is not one 
to be much loved. 

British produce is sold either for money or barter. 
Except, as jnst now, when the English houses do not want 
to buy silk at present high prices, and the Chinese do want 
cotton goods, the cash sales have not been the majority of 
operations. The bulk has during past years been effected 
by barter. I am told that this is changing, but I speak 
of commercial operations as the authorized figures show 
them. 

Mr. Consul Thom, in a report addressed to Sir John 
Davis in 1846, explains the working of the barter trade in; 
China. He says : — 

" It will be necessary to remind your Excellency that in onr immense- 
transactions at Shanghai there are two prices known— viz., the cash 
price and the barter price. Tiie British merchant on bartering his 
cottons and woollens gets a higher nominal price for them than he 
■would get were he to sell them at the cash price of the day. On the 
other hand, the teaman or silkman just adds an equivalent accretion 
to the price of his silk or tea, and so the account is balanced. 

''Thus, if a manufacturer were to ship a parcel of British goods to 
Shanghai, with instructions that his returns be made in bills, the 
utmost that he can expect is, that his agent shall sell his goods at the 
cash price. But A.B.'s account of sales of goods sold for cash, would 
be very different from his neighbour C. D.'s, which had been bartered. 
The particulars I am now detailing are not well understood in England, 
and when such a circumstance happens it generally causes an un- 
pleasant coi'respondence between the constituent at home and the 
agent out here." 

The Kingpo or Chusan merchant sees that accoiint-sales 



202 CHINA. 

are sent home from Shanghai at 2 dollars 90 cents, and he 
does not like to send home a worse account-sale ; but he 
wants cash, and cannot get this. The natives are retailing 
at less than 2 dollars 90 cents ; he is not authorized to take 
produce, so he must either submit to a sacrifice or retire 
before native competition. 

I do not mean to insist upon this as an insurmountable 
objection. No doubt this is righting or will right itself. 
No doubt consignors in England and consignees in China, 
with multifarious transactions, come to understand these 
matters. But such having during former years been the 
course of business, it is quite easy to comprehend that 
pushing British produce has not been the first object of a 
merchant located in China. 

I am perfectly aware that the British manufacturers, 
when the four ports were first opened, established houses in 
China for the sole purpose of extending the sale of their 
produce, and that these houses did not pay. They could not 
pay, nor would they now pay. The great profits come from 
tea, silk, and opium. The houses that have this business in 
their hands, have also to a great extent the British exports 
in their hands. The British export trade will not maintain 
mercantile houses ; but it would pay for travelling agents 
acting in immediate connection with the home manufac- 
turers, who should keep their principals at home well 
informed, and who should work their operations through 
the established houses here. 

After what I have said, you must not wonder to hear 
some of the wealthiest men of China say that we are going 
on very well as we are — that the demands for free inter- 
course are unjust and impolitic — and that the utmost we 
want is one or two more ports and an embassy at Pekin. 
Such is not the opinion of the great body of the mercantile 
community. But it is the opinion of men who will be much 
listened to in England. 

4. But the chief and all-sufficient reason why we are 
not doing what we ought to do in China is, that China is 
not open to our merchandise. 

Of course, there is a Spitalfields-ball sort of feeling in 
China, as elsewhere ; and official persons, bermg all in China 



HOW TO INCHEASE OUR EXPORT TRADE. 203 

of the good old Tory school, set their faces against foreign 
goods. I have been told of Chinamen stating they were 
ready to take shiploads of Manchester goods if they could 
only be protected from the interference of their own 
mandarins. 

But this is a very minor consideration. The authorities 
in China are strong against an individual, but utterly power- 
less against a popular feeling. China in this respect is the 
most democratic country in the world; witness the growth of 
the poppy, the difficulty of raising new taxes, the immediate 
downfall of an unpopular officer, and the utter failure of the 
Emperor and all his power at Pekin to force into circulation 
his debased 10-cash piece. The evil is that British goods 
are not brought under the eyes of the Chinamen of the 
interior cities. A Chinaman is the incarnation of what 
some people in England would call common sense. He has 
no prejudices of any kind, patriotic, religious, or senti- 
mental. He has a strong clannish family selfishness, and 
that is all. You • have nothing, therefore, to do but to con- 
vince him that you have that to sell which it would suit him 
to have, and that you can sell it at a lower price than he 
can get it at elsewhere. 

Convince the people of this, and all the mandarins in China 
Avill not stop your sales. 

At present however, you are only upon the outer fringe of 
the great Chinese empire. You might have made more of your 
sphere of action than you have made, but you are not trading 
with China. 

All our ports, except Shanghai, are separated from the 
inland waters of China by a chain of mountains. A con- 
tinuation of the Himalayas, at a much lower altitude, tracks 
the whole coast line of China at some distance from the sea, 
and passes out at the archipelago of Chusan. 

Inside those mountains lies the bulk of the empire of 
China — outside lie our trading-ports. 

The seaboard provinces extending southwards from Mngpo 
to Canton are thus isolated from the interior, and from the 
great inland routes of traffic by this barrier of mountains. 
Over these mountains goods transmitted from the interior 
to any of these ports must be carried. Even in passing from 



204 CHINA. 

INingpo to Hangchow there must be two transshipments of 
goods. Amoy and Foochow have the same position. Canton 
labours under the same disadvantages. Every piece of mer- 
chandise brought down from or carried up to the interior 
must be carried for twenty miles over a chain of mountains, 
and carried on men's backs. But, then, Canton has been 
fostered by its monopoly of intercourse ; a race of carrying 
coolies has grown into existence, and the difficulties are 
reduced to their minimum. If some strong and unreasoning 
power were to declare that Southend should be the only port 
in the British islands where commerce should be carried on, 
no doubt Southend would have a still longer pier, and docks 
would be dug, and a harbour would be made, and Southend 
would cease to be the uninteresting spot it now is. Canton 
has been a Southend with its suggested monopoly. Amoy, 
Foochow, and Niugpo are Southends without any monopoly. 

There is a way of getting behind these hills and into the 
central districts of the empire — a way wherein the merchant 
may travel without toil or danger ; where no robbers can 
assail him at a vantage ; where secret imposts cannot s]3oil 
his markets — a way which extends up to the furthest limits 
of the empire, and whence convenient and innumerable ways 
branch forth, reaching to every hamlet of this great central 
region. The gate at which we must enter China is the 
mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang. Give us entrance there, in 
our own ships, in our own steamers, and we can deposit our 
goods in every great city of the interior of China. 

Let us start from Shanghai, and make an imaginary 
voyage up this river. With the exception of M. Hue, no 
European has ever yet sailed upon its higher waters, or has, 
indeed, been much above Nankin. M. Hue has added 
nothing to our knowledge for commercial purposes ; but I 
have obtained access to some reports of Chinese, who traverse 
the whole distance frequently with commercial objects, and 
I may be able to tell something more of this river than is yet 
known to Englishmen. 

Having threaded our way through the shallows at the 
mouth, we are in the largest, the deepest, and the most 
abundant river in the world. We go for 200 miles 
through the rich province of Kiangsu, passing towns and 



IMAGINARY VOYAGE UP THE YANG-TSE-KIANG. 205 

anchorages less well known to sliips of war. We will not 
linger at Chekiang, or even at Nankin, for these great 
cities are now nothing more than the seared and wasted 
strongholds of a piratical power. All that was beautiful in 
the southern capital of China — even the famous porcelain 
pagoda — has been wantonly destroyed. Shut in from the 
land by the Imperialist besiegers, the rebels maintain them- 
selves by plundering the rich country up and down the 
banks of the river, and the Imperialists are scarcely less 
burdensome to the country behind their camp. Commerce 
has fled from these parts. All we can ask of these plunderers 
is to let us pass in peace. 

Hitherto we have been in a tidal river. Henceforward, 
although we must still reckon its width by miles and its 
depth, by tens of fathoms, our merchandise-laden steamer 
must be content to labour against an unchanging stream. 
"We traverse the rich and thickly-peo^Dled province of Anhui, 
and in our voyage of 200 miles through that province we 
find, besides a constant succession of towns, two first-class 
cities, at which we may tarry awhile to display our merchan- 
dise and lighten our cargo. 

Now we reach the provinces of Hupeli and Honan, the 
former on the north, the latter on the soutli bank. This is 
the country of the finest teas. It is here that the Oopak 
teas are grown, which, by an unnatural route, are forced 
down to Canton, being borne on men's backs across the 
mountains instead of being sent deftly down the stream of the 
great river whose banks produce them. Here are lakes, and 
broad streams running into them, and networks of canals 
connecting them. But more than this, here, just at this 
spot, is the confluence of the Yang-tse with the great river 
Han, which is itself banked with large cities and heavy with 
commerce. 

At this confluence we have a congregation of enormous 
cities — Wuchung on the one bank, and Hannan oi^posite, 
with immense suburbs extending far away. The j3opulation 
of these cities is differently estimated at 3,000,000 and 
5,000,000 souls ; but, what is of still greater importance, 
these two cities are undoubtedly the first great emporium of 
Chinese commerce. Here is a market which may set all 



206 CHINA. 

Mancliestor spinning, all Leeds weaving, all Sheffield grinding, 
and all Nottingham throwing, if we onty have on board 
samples of what these celestials desiderate. It might be 
worth while, if they are shy of our new goods, to anchor a 
depot ship in the broad waters, — for we are told there are 
five miles of river from shore to shore — and accustom them 
to the sight of luxuries and necessaries which they may have 
in exchange for their cheap and abundant first-class teas. 
Surely it would be better thus to get rid of them than to 
send them down the Yuen river to the Tungting lake, then 
by the capital city of Changteh, up the Siang river to the 
Ching district, across the mountain on men's backs to Loh- 
chang, and then down the northern river to Fatshan and 
Canton, for such is their present route. What charges must 
accumulate upon English goods that should try to come up 
the long, devious route by which these teas descend. 

We are only half-way yet along our voyage. The river 
leads us through the whole province of Hupeh ; and why 
should we not do a little business at the great cities of 
Kingchow and Tchang, the walls of which we must pass I 
To this city of Tchang junks of 300 tons burden ascend in 
great numbers, and the water is still deep, though the 
bottom is rocky and dangerous. 

A little higher up than Tchang we arrive at the town 
of Kwei. We are now 900 miles from the mouth of the 
Yang-tse, and here for the present our steamer must be 
content to stop, for here for the first time we meet with 
rapids. When the summer sun has melted the snows of 
Central Asia the trading junks shoot down these falls, and, 
empty of cargo, they can be forced up them. But if we are 
ever to pursue an unbroken voyage beyond this point, John 
Chinaman must add one other to his at present innumerable 
canals, and English engineers must teach him the secret of 
constructing locks. 

It will not do, however, to be stopped by these rapids. 
The whole basin of the Yang-tse is one vast coal field. From 
Nankin to Sz'chuen we have difficulty in obtaining the means 
of locomotion. There are markets higher up, and thither, 
in a steamer to be put together above the falls, we must go. 
Let us suppose this — no great labour for us Anglo-Saxons — 



IMAGINARY VOYAGE UP THE YANG-TSE-KIANG. 207 

to have been accomplished. The stream is still deep and 
navigable. It is crowded with junks, as M. Hue will testify. 
Kwei was just upon the boundary line between Sz'chuen 
and Hupeh, and Sz'chuen is the last province of China. 
Beyond that are the snows of Thibet and the swamps of 
Burmah. Sz'chuen is the finest province in all China. 
" You never see an ill-dressed man from Sz'chuen," says the 
Chinese proverb. " It grows more grain in one year than 
it can consume in ten," says another native authority, 
addicted, I fear, to exaggeration. This province appears to 
produce everything ; more silk than any other province, 
more and better wax and tobacco, grass-cloth of the finest 
quality, tea of the coarsest, grain in such quantities that its 
supplies act upon the distant market of Hangchow. More- 
over, the climate is variable, extremely hot and extremely 
cold, just suited for our w^oollens. My Cliinese authority 
asserts that they penetrate there now even through the 
diflaculties of the transit from Canton j and he says (I 
suspect with some • exaggeration), that one-half of the long- 
ells and shirtings landed at Canton find their tedious way 
over the hills and up the rivers to Sz'chuen. 

We must go up, therefore, above the Kwei falls, and must 
pursue our voyage till we reach the confluence of the Yang- 
tse with the Kialing, a river which comes down from the 
north. At this confluence stands the great city Chung-kiiig, 
the second great commercial emporium of China. My au- 
thority states that under the walls of this city of Chung-king 
the lusty young Yang-tse is already as broad as the Canton 
river in front of the dear departed factories, and very deep 
and very rapid. You may go farther if you please, for there 
is the Western Soochow and all the land of poppy-bearing 
Yunnan higher up. But the stream grows rocky, and 
savage tribes from Thibet and Burmah make the way 
dangerous. We are getting to the western boundary of 
China Proper. We have done our work ; we have " opened 
up the country : " so here we will turn our steamer's head 
— shall we call her the Yang-tse 2 — and pass swiftly back, 
towing our junk-loads of tea and silk and wax, and satisfied, 
I hope, with our speculative voyage. I have said nothing 
of consuls or consular establishments. The merchants appear 



208 CHINA. 

to incline to the opinion tliat they do not want them, and "^ 
are better without them. They say that Swatow and Woo- 
chow are growing into importance without consular protec- 
tion, and that the want is not felt. I differ a little here. 
If you do not want consuls to protect, you want them to 
restrain. We must not allow a vagabond European popula- . 
tion to run riot in the internal cities of China, or we shall 
change the peaceful character of the people. Wuchang and 
Chung-king might, however, well maintain each a consul 
or consular agent with extended jurisdiction, and this would 
be ample for a commencement. A consul may be a great 
nuisance. A fussy consul, not now in China, drove the 
carrying trade at one of our ports out of our hands. He 
made so many petty difficulties that the Chinamen wrote up 
and down the coast not to charter British ships. We must 
have no eUves of the Circumlocution Office in the Yang-tse. ' 

As I have brought our voyage so I must bring this paper 
to a close, for the subject is so vast that fresh fields open 
upon me more rapidly than the past have been traversed. 
Surely you can work out for yourselves the tributaries of 
the Yang-tse and the Grand-Canal-pierced provinces of the 
north and canals of the interior. Bradshaw's Railway Map 
is a blank sheet compared with these. I have spoken • 
already of the advantages of the northern coast when Pekin 
may be reached from the sea. Give us free access to China ; 
protect us in the exercise of our privileges until the Chinese 
are become accustomed to us and understand us, and fix our 
duty payments firmly and explicitly, and everything else 
will follow. The great piracy difficulty on the coast will 
find its own solution ; for the coalfields will be opened, and 
some screw steam company will get possession of the coasting 
trade. The custom-house bugbear will disappear, for the 
goods will be jout down at the door of the customer. Teas 
and silks will be bought cheaper, for different districts will 
be made to compete when we buy direct from the producer ; 
and British manufactures, with moderate energy and enter- 
prise, will make a fair start. 

I ought to say something of the trade with Thibet from ■ 
India ; but it is a long matter, and I have not courage to 
ask attention to it. Dr. Campbell, the superintendent of , 



TRADE WITH THIBET. 209 

Daijeeling, who I hope has escaped these recent dangers, 
understands this subject thoroughly, and should be heard 
upon it before our treaty terms are settled. 

Such are the facts and opinions I have been able to gather 
upon the British import trade into China. The subject is 
too vast to be fully treated by a cursory writer. If I have 
v/earied the public by saying so much, I am dissatisfied 
myself at having left so much unsaid. Many to|)ics press 
upon me as I resolutely close the paper. Let me onl}^ add 
that all dealing with the interior of China is impossible 
unless your agents speak the language of the people ; and I 
have done. 



CHAPTER XYIII. 

FAREWELL TO SHANGHAI. 

Intelligeuce is Received of Intended Operations against Canton — The 
Author Prepares to Keturn to the South — Anticipates that Future 
Proceedings in the North will become Necessary — Has Gathered 
Information with a View to these Proceedings — How Pekin is Fed — 
Interruption of Inland Transit for Rice — Present Practice of Con- 
veyance by Sea — Supplies may be Intercepted — Relations between 
the Russian and Chinese Governments — Description of Chinese Life 
at Shanghai — The Coolies — The Custom-house — The Toutai's Suite — 
The European Inspectors of Customs — A Funeral Procession — The 
Chinese Bystanders — The Operation of Producing small Feet de- 
scribed — A Chinese Marriage — The Shanghai Tea-gardens — Conjurors 
and "Ventriloquists — Curio Shops and Miniature Painters — Departure 
from Shanghai — Arrival at Hongkong — Hongkong News. 

Shanghai, Oct. 23. 

A CHANGE has come over the policy of the authorities in the 
South. The French ambassador has arrived in the mouth of 
the Canton river. The projected northern voyage is defi- 
nitively abandoned. It is reported that the order has gone 
forth that Canton shall be taken, and I must return to my 
post of observation. I hope to add a postscript to this letter 
with a Hongkong date. 

When we have settled our differences with the Cantonese, 
p 



210 CHINA. 

the scene of action will be removed to these northern 
ports. 

The Chinese officials, or "the mandarins/' as it is the 
custom to call them, are of opinion that our decisive move, 
in order to coerce the court of Pekin, will be to cut off the 
supply of food to the capital. They reason, according to 
Chinese logic, from the precedent of the last war ; and, for 
once, I am inclined to adopt the same conclusion, and from 
the same premises. In our previous experience the Court 
was immovable so long as we only killed, burnt, and de- 
stroyed in the provinces. Directly we put a muzzle upon the 
mouths of the populace of Pekin, the Court was at our feet ; 
so it will be again. 

I have been investigating how Pekin is fed. I cannot 
quote my authorities without certain loss of the heads of 
my informants ; but the following may be relied upon as in 
the main correct : — 

There are nine of the eighteen provinces of China which 
produce rice, and have, or rather had, means of water com- 
munication with Pekin. These provinces are — Puhkien, 
Chekiang, Kiangsi, Shantung, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsu, 
Nganhwui, and Szcliuen. These provinces, according to 
ancient precedent, pay their tribute to the capital in rice. 
They are bound to contribute in the aggregate 10,000 junks, 
each containing 1,000 piculs of 133 lbs. English ; but in the 
arrangement of the proportion. Shantung and Hunan, on 
account of their poverty or their small extent, only pay as 
half a province each. 

This arrangement gave an annual supply of 10,000,000 
piculs to the Imperial city, which, at the regular allowance 
of about l^lb. per day per mouth — such is the capacity of 
the measure meted out to the soldiery — would feed a popula- 
tion of 3,000,000. The calculation, therefore, as is necessary 
in all large calculations, allowed largely for a difference 
between figures and facts. 

The rebellion, however, and especially the occupation of 
Chekiang,* upon the Yang-tse, has deranged this comfortable 

* Since this was written, Chekiang has been retaken — or rather, 
perhaps, rebought — by the Imperialists. This, hov/ever, will not 
necessarily reopen the inland communication. The rice-junks uaed 



HOW PEKIN IS FED. 211 

state of things. The provinces south of the Yang-tse can 
no longer communicate with the capital by the inner waters ; 
Szchuen is obliged to send silver to Kiangsi, and there 
purchase the rice which could not be sent from the province 
itself. 

In recent years the 10,000,000 piculs have been enor- 
mously diminished ; and the Pekin Gazette has contained 
many lamentations on this score. So late as the 26th of Sep- 
tember there is a memorial on this subject. The number of 
the 20th of September contains the answer of officers to the 
urgent orders already given to collect rice and send it round 
by Tiensin. There is no trade at Pekin j and the supply is 
necessarily a very critical affair. 

Nankin formerly sent three millions, and Nankin has 
now other mouths to feed. The China merchants who 
bought the Szchuen rice were never paid, for the four lacs 
of dollars sent from that province to pay for it were em- 
bezzled by the mandarins — an irregularity which has not 
tended to facilitate matters. The other provinces had 
experienced inundations and locusts, and had Imperial or 
rebel armies in their neighbourhood, and they paid their 
quotas with difficulty. But still, tant bien que mal, Pekin 
has been fed. The supply, however, no longer reaches the 
city as formerly by the Imperial Canal and the other inner 
waters ; but the junks start from the coast, and, by seaboard, 
they voyage to the Gulf of Pecheli and the mouth of the 
Peiho. 

The custom is to gather the rice together upon the coast 
so soon as the harvest is got in. About the 1st of January 
of our year the custom-houses lay embargo upon the junks, 
and retain them for the annual voyage to Tiensin. Imme- 
diately after the commencement of the new year, which 
occurs early in February, the junks start, and, struggling 
against the adverse monsoon, make their way in perhaps 
five or six weeks to the mouth of the Peiho. About the 
tenth day of the second month is the day calculated for 

■upon the canals have, as I described in my journey to Hangchow, 
been suffered to fall into decay ; and the Chinese assert that the cana 
to the north of Chekiang is now become useless. 

p 2 



212 CHINA. 

tlieir arrival, for by this time the ice has disappeared from 
the riv^ei". 

If this freight should arrive safe in Pekin, our war with 
"China will last for twelve months longer. 

The Chinese are quite alive to this their vital difficulty. 
They are talking of assembling this year's fleet at Lehoo, a 
place not marked in our maps, about fifty miles to the north of 
Woosung, which was used for the same purpose when 
Shanghai was in the hands of the rebels four years since. 
The government has lately also been buying some steamers. 
They now have three in their service^ and, although chasing 
pirates and quelling rebels is the ostensible object, I fancy 
that towing rice-junks at a critical moment is their real 
destination. 

That rice is being collected with extraordinary activity in 
Kiangsu, and that the mandarins are under strong pressure, 
is evident. The Chinese say there is generally a slant of 
wind on the 10th moon (January), under favour of which 
the junks can work up north. 

The scheme is not badly conceived, and it may possibly 
be successful. The mandarins shrewdly calculate, that in 
all probability the barbarians will take it for granted that 
the junks will not sail northwards till the change of the 
monsoon, and that they will not care to keep the sea and 
blockade the coast in January, and if the flat-bottomed rice- 
boats can once escape up into the gulf of Pecheli, that gulf 
will be so shallow at that period of the year that the 
steamers cannot follow them. 

If they can run into the Yellow River they will also be 
safe, for thence northwards the inner waters to Pekin are 
open. It is impossible to guess what insuperable impedi- 
ments the courtesy of the French Emperor towards his 
long-tailed imperial brother, or the '• mother wit " of Mr. 
Commissioner Reed, or the instructions from Downing 
Street, may interpose to a blockade of the whole coast north 
of Shanghai ; but I take it that if left to their own devices 
Lord Elgin and Admiral Seymour are not the men to allow 
such a march as this to be stolen upon them. With Canton 
in hand, and with this fleet of rice-junks kept outside, Lord 
Elgin's road to Pekin would be strewn with flowers, and his 



HOW PEKI2f MAY BE STARVED. 213 

negotiations at tlie Court would be of a very curt and satis- 
factory character.* 

It is an uncomfortable thing to have to state any fact 
upon Chinese authority, for you know that, if a falsehood 
will serve the turn, they never have recourse to truth. The 
Chinese, however, all tell me that the Eussians have been to 
Tiensin, and they give me circumstantial details of the 
transactions there, and name even the officers commissioned 
to meet them. According to these accounts the two 
Governments are upon the most friendly terms. The 
Chinese affirm that the object of the visits of the Russian 
admiral to the port of Shanghai has been to keep the court 
of Pekin informed of the preparations and intentions of the 
English, and they hint that the Eussians have led them to 
believe that at the proper moment Russia will interpose 
her mediation to settle the differences. 

If tliese statements are not true, they are well invented. 
The two Courts are undoubtedly aux 2^6tits soins just now. 
The Pekin Gazette of the 26th of September reports the 
return of E-ke-le, a Chinese officer who had been sent to- 
the Court of Russia to present condolences on the death of 
Nicholas. The Gazette simply states that the envoy, having 
had an audience with the present Emperor, had returned. 

Perhaps I am inclined to believe more of this information 
because I get it from peculiar and exclusive sources ; but, at 
any rate, it is safe to conclude that the Chinese are quite 
alive to every point of the game they are now playing, and 
that they are disposed to avail themselves of Russia. 

Before we leave Shanghai I must ask the British public 
to accompany me in a morning walk npon the Bund. It 
will be hard if we do not find some few scenes there illus- 
trative of Chinese life and manners. We will start from 
the hotel, which notifies its whereabouts in the rear of the 
settlement by a high flagstaff and a most demonstrative 
banner. The street we follow is bounded by the garden 
w^alls and entrances of several " hongs " — ornamented de- 
tached residences, resembling a little the villas in the 
Regent's Park. Our path is through a crowd of jostling 
coolies. They are carrying, balanced on their bamboo poles 

* The opportunity -was lost, and my prediction has been fulfilled. 



^14 CHINA. 

chests of tea, bales of silk, bricks of Sycee silver, and burdens 
more multifarious. It is hard work. They earn by con- 
tinuous labour nearly eight shillings a day. But a man is 
worn out in about seven years, and he then retires on his 
economies, and enjoys his hardly-earned leisure upon a small 
plot of ground in the interior. We now see them at full 
work, loading and discharging cargo. Each as he goes emits 
a sound like the moan of a man in pain, " Ah ho ! ah ho ! " 
From early morning till eventide this chorus of sorrowful 
sound fills the air. It is more multitudinous and mono- 
tonous than the croak of the frogs in the swamps — than the 
harsh, grating cry of the cicadce upon the boughs. The 
habit, so far as I can discover, is confined to this port ; but 
a Shanghai porter can no more do his work without his 
" Ah ho ! " than a London paviour can get on without his 
" Hough." When the English first came here, the house- 
servants brought up the soups and the legs of mutton 
singing " Ah ho " in procession through the dining-room. 
This was promptly put down ; but the out-of-door chorus 
still proceeds. Every moment from 800 chests comes this 
sad monotonous cry, depressing to the spirits of new-comers. 

We make our way through this croaking crowd, and 
debouch upon the Bund — the broad embankment, having 
on one side the wide river, with seventy square-rigged 
vessels lying at easy anchor in its noble reach ; and on the 
other side the "compounds," or ornamental grounds, each 
containing the hong and the godowns of some one of the 
principal European commercial houses. The only building 
•on the Bund which is of Chinese architecture, is the custom- 
house, which is like a joss-house. 

There is something going on at the custom-house. The 
Toutai's suite fill the outer courtyard. Some twenty fellows 
wearing mandarins' caps, with fox-tails sticking out behind, 
have swords at their sides and form the military escort. 
Their trowsers are much patched, and their odour is not fra- 
grant ; yet, if one of these ragged ruffians would come to 
London and submit to be washed, Mrs. Leo Hunter would 
ask lords and ladies to meet him, and present him to her 
guests as " a mandarin from China." There are two curious 
creatures, having enormous gilt hares on their heads and 



A WALK ABOUT SHANGHAI. 215 

plieasant feathers protruding behind. They are rather 
shabbier and dirtier than their military comrades, and look 
as though they had been turned out of Mr. Richardson's 
booth for lack of cleanliness. There are two executioners, 
conspicuous by their black conical caps, their dark costume, 
and their iron chains, worn like a sword-belt. The larger 
one is said to be of wonderful skill in taking off heads ; the 
smaller excels in producing exquisite torture with the 
bamboo. Let us go inside. There is incense-burning, and 
liriests are chanting. Mandarins with white or red buttons 
to their caps, silk dresses, and very dirty hands, are knock- 
ing their heads upon the ground before a little joss. It is a 
Chinese ceremonial day. They have turned the custom- 
house into a joss-house for the nonce, and are come here to 
" chin-chin " the God of Wealth, which means to pray for a 
good harvest of import and export duties. The rite is soon 
performed; the Toutai comes forth; the procession is formed. 
It would look splendid in drawing or photograph, but it is 
squalid and ludicrous in its shabby reality. The Toutai 
mounts his pony, the large crimson parasol is raised above 
his head — 

" Interque signa turpe militaria 
" Sol adspicit conopium" — 

and the cortege moves off. 

About this custom-house there is a grave matter to be 
debated. At the instance of the three treaty powers, the 
Chinese authorities have established at this port a trium- 
virate of European inspectors, or collectors of customs — an 
Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American. They were 
originally selected by their respective Governments. They 
each receive £2,000 a year — a salary not too great to com- 
pensate them for the odium which the discharge of their 
duties involves. The English Government has ceased to 
interfere, or to recognize Mr. Lay as having any other 
capacity than that of an officer of the Chinese Govern- 
ment.* The French and American consuls retain an 

* Since my return to England, I read that Mr. Lay Las been taken 
up northwards by Lord Elgin. The Chinese teachers say that he is, of 
all Europeans, the man who has the most ready and useful knowledge 
of the Chinese languages and customs. 



216 CHINA. 

iiiflnence in the nomina,tion and control of the inspectors of 
their respective nations. 

The effect of this custom-house arrangement is that the 
duties of the port of Shanghai are received in fulL At 
the other ports the old system of corruption prevails^ and 
the Chinese collectors make their private bargains — usually 
about one-half of the tariff prices. Nothing but strong 
intrinsic vitality has enabled the trade of Shaughai to thrive 
in spite of this great disadvantage. The English merchants 
are divided in opinion upon this subject of duty collecting. 
Some think that the Chinese should be left to themselves ; 
that we should deal with the officials as we do in England 
with the farmers of turnpike tolls, every man making his 
own contract bargain. 

Others think that the inspecting system should be ex- 
tended to all the ports. A third party are in favour of the 
abolition of all duties at the ports, allowing the Chinese to 
collect their own import and export duties inside. It is a 
difficult subject, almost impossible to be satisfactorily ar- 
ranged by any treaty which shall give to the Chinese 
government the action of an independent power ; but the 
difficulty arises from the incurable corruption of the Chinese 
magistracy, and the crumbling rottenness of the govern- 
ment. Having to deal with such a nation, the necessities of 
.self-protection give us rights which we should not have if 
we were dealing with honest men. 

There is a sound of gongs, and a crepitation of small 
crackers at the north end of the Bund, and the coolies are 
leaving their work to look on. As it is a day for sight- 
seeing, and sight- seeing is our business, let us follow the 
crowd. 

It is a burial procession. The mother of a Chinese opium- 
broker is going to her last home. She carries with her all 
her little comforts and necessities wherewith to begin life in 
the next world. Many palanquins appear at unequal dis^- 
tances, preceded and followed by coolies marching four 
abreast. These litters contain small joss-houses, and basins 
holding fruits, and sweetmeats, and bean cakes, and other 
orthodox l^uddhist comestibles. There is good store, also, of 
silvered and gilded paper, made to resemble solid ingots of 



A FUNERAL. 21 T 

gold and silver. Tliis is the wealth wherewith she is to 
appear in the land of ghosts as a respectable, well-to-do 
matron. But if this bullion pass current among the ghosts, 
thev have lost the qualities which most distinguish them in 
the flesh. In life, a Chinaman can distinguish the exact 
fineness of a piece of silver by the touch, so much so that 
the word " touch " is used as a technical term to indicate 
the quality of each description of bullion ; it must be very 
harrowing to the feelings of the ghost of a Chinese com- 
p)rador to find himself obliged to deal in these shadowy 
ingots. On marches the procession. There are little boys 
blowing shrill trumpets and other stranger wind instru- 
ments, men excruciating our ears with cymbals and gongs, 
and grave adults exploding strings of crackers. Then comes 
the cofiin — a strong wooden case like a carved and orna- 
mented trunk of a tree. It is half covered by draperies, 
and is borne by twelve coolies. It is hermetically sealed 
with that tenacious plaster the Chinese call " chunam." It 
will be borne to a joss-house in the city, and thence to aj 
spot in one of her son's fields. Here it will rest on the 
surface of the ground. After the time of mourning is past, 
a few spadefuls of earth will be shovelled upon it, then year 
by year a few more, till a mound arises, and rank grass ands 
Chinese lilies spring up ; and this old lady's habitation adds 
another unit to the myriads of sacred barrows which cumber 
the rich soil and serve no purpose but a harbour for the 
pheasants when the crops are cut. Our English books upon 
China say that only hills are set apart for this purpose. 
Sir John Davis falls into this error. But our English writers, 
for the most part, write only of what they have seen on the 
banks of the Canton river. Between Shanghai and Keehing 
I have seen thousands of acres of alluvial soil which the 
plough never turns because they are sacred to the dead. 

We have plenty of time to look about us, for the pro- 
cession yet drags its slow length along. The denizens of 
the Bund have turned out to look, and business is 2:)roceed- 
ing. There is an English merchant arranging the sale of a 
cargo of rice with a Chinaman. 

" Wantee numba one bad licee for that sojer — numba one 
badlicee?" 



218 CHII\TA. 

" Number one bad rice for your soldiers," says the indig- 
iiptut Briton. " Why, we always have the best provisions 
we can obtain for our soldiers and sailors." Heaven forgive 
tbe patriotic man of commerce ! but he never saw a weavelly 
biscuit, or opened a tin of Crimean preserved meat. " O, 
maskee, numba one bad licee too muchee good for sojer 
man." 

We are separated from these bargainers by a fisherman 
and his wife, who push their way by. The lady, who is not 
in her premiere jeunesse, has large natural feet, and, having 
tucked up her trousers, displays a pair of calves which an 
Irish porter might envy. Taking advantage of their wake, 
stiffly totters upon her small deer's feet an ordinary China- 
woman of the urban population. She has no calves what- 
ever. The muscles of her leg were destroyed by the opera- 
tion which produced that beautiful foot ; and from the knee 
downwards her leg is but skin and bone. Do you ask how 
this strange deformity is produced 1 Stand back out of the 
crowd, inside the entrance to Mr. Heard's compound, and I 
will tell you. 

There are small-footed ladies at Hongkong who gain a 
very fair livelihood by exhibiting their pedal extremities to 
sea-captains and other curious Europeans at a dollar a head; 
but, as so superficial an examination of this national pecu- 
liarity did not satisfy me, I had recourse to some of my 
good friends among the missionaries. By their aid I ob- 
tained that some poor Chinese women should bring me a 
complete gamut of little girls from the missionary schools. 
Many of these female children probably owed their lives to 
the persuasion (aided by opportune donations of rice) of 
nay missionary friend and his lady ; but their influence had 
been powerless to prevent the torture of their feet. 

On the appointed day they were all seated in a row in 
my friend's library, and their feet, which I suspect had 
undergone a preparatory washing, were unbound by their 
mammas. The first was a child of two years old. Her 
penance had just commenced. When the bandage of blue 
cotton was taken oflT, I found that the great toe had been 
left untouched ; but the other four had been forced down 
imder the ball of the foot, and closely bound in that position. 



HOW THE " SMALL FOOT" IS PRODUCED. 219 

The child, therefore, walked upon the knuckle-joints of her 
four toes. The toes were red and inflamed, and the ligature 
caused evident pain. In the next three children (all of ages 
advancing at small intervals) the preparation was only to 
the same extent ; it was confined to the four toes ; gradually, 
however, these four toes, ceding to the continual pressure, 
lost their articulations and their identity as limbs, and 
became amalgamated with the sole of the foot. In the 
eldest of the four the redness and inflammation had entirely 
disappeared, the foot was cool and painless, and appeared as 
though the four toes had been cut ofl" by a knife. The foot 
was novv^ somewhat the shape of a trowel. 

In the fifth girl I saw the commencement of the second 
operation — a torture under which sickly children frequently 
die. The sole of the foot was now curved into the shape of 
a bow j the great toe and the heel being brought together 
as near as possible. Take a jujube and double it till two 
points of the lozenge nearly meet, and you will see what I 
mean. This is done very gradually. The bandage is never 
slackened ; month by month it is drawn tighter ; the foot 
inflames and swells, but the tender mamma perseveres ; as 
the bones and tendons accommodate themselves to the posi- 
tion constrained by the bandage, so it is drawn tighter. At 
last the ball of the natural foot fits into the hollow of the 
sole ; the root of the great toe is brought into contact with 
the heel. The foot is a shapeless lump. The instep is 
where the ankle was, and all that is left to go into the 
slipper and to tread the ground, is the ball of the great toe 
and the heel. This is the small foot of the Chinese woman 
— a bit of toe and a bit of heel, with a mark, like a cicatrice 
left after a huge cut, running up between them. Two of 
the girls were yet suffering great pain, and their feet were 
hot and inflamed ; but in the eldest the operation was com- 
plete. She had attained to the position of a small-footed 
woman ; and her feet were quite cool, had no corns, and 
were not tender to the touch. One of the mammas, in- 
fluenced perhaps by a little liberality in the article of rice- 
money, intrusted me with a Chinese mystere de toilette. 
Sometimes, it seems, when a woman is expected to have to 
do hard work, her toe and heel are not drawn so tightly 



220 CHINA. 

together as to produce the true " small foot." To disguise 
this imperfection upon her marriage-day, she has recourse to^ 
art. A piece of cork, shaped like an inverted sugar-loaf, is 
strapped on to her foot, and the small part goes into her 
slipper and passes for her foot. Thus are we poor men 
deceived ! 

While we are gossiping about small feet, the old lady's 
burial procession comes to an end. It would be hissed at 
Astley's and would be regarded with blank astonishment at 
the Princess's ; but it is very successful at Shanghai. The 
opium-broker has done his duty as a good son. If he keeps- 
his two years of mourning properly, and if none of his 
wives should commit the indiscretion of having a child 
within two years, commencing from nine months after this 
time (for the present emperor is supposed to owe all his 
misfortunes to an unfortunate accident of this sort), he will 
be esteemed a very respectable man for evermore. 

The Bund resumes its normal state, and the ''Ah he's" 
are again in full chorus. What shall we do next ? It is 
half-past one o'clock, tiffin-time at Shanghai. You have 
made your calls on arriving here, and your cards have been 
duly returned, so you are free to go and come at tiffin-time 
in all their hospitable hongs. No lack of good dishes or of 
pleasant iced drinks at a Shanghai tiffin. Where the junior 
partner, with his employes of silk-inspector and tea-taster, 
and book-keeper and clerks, holds a separate mess, the 
allowance from the house to that mess is never less thau 
£fty Shanghai dollars per month per head, or something 
more than £200 a year to each employe for the table alone. 
We may enter boldly. There is no chance of finding people 
making shifts with small commons in China. There is this 
great charm in European society at all the ports. Every- 
body is able, and is, indeed, obliged to have a lordly indif- 
ference to expense. They cannot control it, and they must 
let it go. There is no struggling and contriving to keep up 
appearances. The profits are large and the expenditure is 
great — laissez aller. 

Tiffin, however, is a bad habit, if we can keep out of it. 
Let us rather stroll towards the city and trust to chance for 
a light lunch. '^ A.'Lin, get a coolie and follow us with some 



A JIAERIAGE. 221 

dollars and some cash" — the rascal wouldn't carry a string of 
copper cash himself to save his father's tail. It is a long 
stretch from the English settlement to the Chinese city. We 
must pass through the French concession in front of Mr. 
ConoUj^^'s hong, wherein that gentleman, with exaggerated 
Shangai hospitalit}^, has just taken in a distressed Singapore 
tiger, whose roaring attracts a crowd of Chinese around his 
gates. A Chinese city is no novelty to us who have 
journeyed together through so many of them j but a festival 
day always has some objects of interest. In Pekin the 
"Board of Bites" busies itself about many things; and 
among others it sets apart two days in every month as the 
days upon which alone marriages can take place. To-day is one 
of these days, and in consequence thereof several gorgeous 
palanquins, like miniature Lord Mayor's coaches taken off 
their wheels, and containing ladies, all splendid in jewels and 
gold, are passing through the narrow streets. These ladies 
have jewelled crowns upon their heads, and veils of strings 
of pearls falling over their faces, and embroidered satin 
tunics, and fans of gold tissue. They are going, properly 
accompanied, to their new homes. One of them is just 
entering the house of a distiller with whom I have some ac- 
quaintance. We shall be welcome ; let us go in. The 
house is decorated for the fete. It is hung with lanterns, 
inside and out. The courtyard is full of relatives and 
hangers-on ; and at the gate is the comprador, who receives 
the money-offerings of the visitors ; the principal room 
opening upon the courtyard is prepared for the feast. Lan- 
terns are hung from the ceilings ; a small joss-house, with 
candles and incense before it, is at one end ; and in the 
middle is the table on which stand the small basins of 
sauces and sliced shellfish, and goose-flesh, and sweetmeats, 
and cakes, which are the precursive appetizers to a Chinese 
dinner. The bridegroom (the son of the proprietor) is 
lounging on a chair in his shirt-sleeves, smoking ; the bride 
is gone up to her chamber, where she is sitting on her 
nuptial couch and receiving her guests. We may go up if 
we please, but it is less trouble to wait and look about us 
till she comes down. We crack a joke or two with the 
bridegroom, and he retires to put on his gorgeous array; and 



222 CHINA, 

then tlie bride appears, followed by her retinue of brides- 
maids, and escorted by an old woman, the go-between who 
has made up the match. We present ourselves in due form, 
and the bride, who, in spite of her high crown and em- 
broidered tunic and trowsers, looks nervous and twitchy, 
and slightly convulsive, just as she might if her name were 
Brown, and if we had accosted her at the door of the vestry 
room of St. George's, Hanover Square, returns cur salutation, 
and would like to pass on. But such is not selon les regies. 
The duenna insists upon our admiring the beauty of the 
head-dress, and the thickness of the embroidered satin 
whereof her tunic is made ; but, above all, she will pull up 
the trowsers to exhibit the faultless proportions of the little 
feet. They are marvellously small. A flea couldn't find 
room to hop in that slipper. " Chin, chin ! " — let us be off. 
There is another decorated dwelling on our way ; but it is a 
cottage, and presents a different scene. Three men are 
drinking sam-shu at a table, while the bride, dressed in her 
borrowed bravery, sits on a barrel in the most distant corner, 
alone and unnoticed. To-morrow and for ever more she will 
be a beast of burden. Perhaps, however, she will, in the 
fulness of time, create her own distractions. A few years 
may probably see a crowd of mangey brats, exhibiting every 
form and species of cutaneous complaint, lighting and yelling 
over their rice-basins, and, aided by the mother's shrew 
voice and the grandmother's croak, making their neighbour- 
hood unbearable. 

Such a family lived opposite to my bed-room window at 
Ningpo. From early cock-crow to sun-down the screams and 
shrill cries were unintermittent. The nuisance burst into 
being all of a sudden ; but I found, on inquiry, that it had 
existed in its present aggravated form about two years 
before, and was then cured. After many vain remonstrances, 
an English merchant complained to the Toutai. N"ext day 
the lord of the house was sent for to the prefecture, and 
being suspended by the thumbs received forty blows of the- 
bamboo ; he was then dismissed with a warning. When 
that respectable housekeeper returned, disjointed and mace- 
rated, to his dwelling, he went in and shut his doors about 
him. What happened in the bosom of that family no man 



THE TEA-GAEDEN3 OF SHANGHAI. 22S 

may know ; but thenceforward the rice was eaten inside the 
house, and the screams did not vibrate in the street. V/hen 
I heard of this I thought I would try what a threat of the 
Toutai would do j so I sent my boy down with a message. 
He returned with the air of an envoy who has failed. 
" 'Well, what does the woman say ? " " She talkee maskee'"" — 
last moon husband dead," 

We must on, it is not pleasant to linger in the streets of 
a Chinese city. The porters jostle you, and the palanquins 
push you aside, and the smells assail you. The French 
Jesuit, to whom a compatriote applied to send her specimens 
of all the finest scents of China, rather exaggerated when 
he replied, " Alas ! madam, in China there is but one scent,, 
and that is not a perfume." There are many scents, but 
with the exception of the white blossom wherewith they 
scent their teas, none of them are perfumes. 

"We bustle our way through the narrow streets. We pass 
the temples and the yamuns, unentered, for we have seen 
a hundred such before, and we reach the tea-gardens of 
Shanghai city. These are worth a visit, for they are the 
best I have seen in China. A Chinese garden is usually 
about twenty yards square ; but these cover an area of teu 
acres. It is an irregular figure, flan]i«?'i by rows of shops, 
rudely analogous to those of the Palais iloyal. The area is 
traversed in all directions by broad canals of stagnant water, 
all grown over with green, and crossed by zigzag wooden 
bridges, of the willow-pattern plate model, sadly out of 
repair, and destitute of paint. Where the water is not, there 
are lumps of artificial rockwork, and large pavilion-shaped 
tea-rooms, perhaps twenty in number. Here self-heating 
kettles of gigantic proportions are always hissing and 
bubbling ; and at the little tables the Chinese population are 
drinking tea, smoking, eating almond hardbake or pomegra- 
nates, playing dominoes, or arranging bargains. There are 
interstices, also, of vacant land, and these are occupied by 

* Maskee means "nevermind." Like ''chow-chow" and "man- 
darin," and other words of this sort used in the "Canton English," it 
is not Chinese. The Chinese use these words, believing them to be 
English ; and the English adopt them, often believing them to be 
Chinese. 



2'>A CHI2fA. 

jugglers and peep-show men. From the upper room of one 
of these tea-houses we shall have a view of the whole scene, 
and A'Lin w'ill order us a cup of tea and some cakes for 
lunch. The jugglers and gymnasts below are doing much 
the same kind of tricks which their brethren of England and 
France perform. M. Houdin and Mr. Anderson would find 
their equals among these less pretending -wizards. I am 
told that those peep-shows, which old men are looking into, 
and laughing, and which young boys are not prevented from 
seeing, contain representations of the grossest obscenity. 
Here is a ventriloquist who, attracted by our Eurojjean 
costumes at the casement, has come up to perform. " Give 
him a dollar, A'Lin, and tell him to begin." That dirty 
half-clad wanderer would make another fortune for Barnum. 
He unfolds his pack, and constructs out of some curtains a 
small closed room. Into this he retires, and immediately a 
little vaudeville is heard in progress inside. Half a dozen 
voices in rapid dialogue, sounds, and movements, and cries 
of animals, and the clatter of falling articles, tell the action 
of the plot. The company from the tea-tables, who had 
gathered round, wag their tails with laughter, especially at 
the broadest sallies of humour, and at the most indecorous 
denouments. In tr'iUi, there is no difficulty, even to us, in 
comprehending what 'S supposed to be going on in that little 
room. The incidents are, indeed, somewhat of the broadest 
— not so bad as the scenes in our orthodox old English 
comedies, such as " The Custom of the Country," for in- 
stance, or " The Conscious Lovers ; " but still they are very 
minutely descriptive of facts not proper to be described. 
The man's talent, however, would gain him full audiences in 
Europe, without the aid of grossness. 

" Ho lai " — " bring fire." Shall we light a cheroot and 
stroll about ? Don't make too sure, Mr. Bull, that the 
gentleman in the mandarin cap, who is holding you by the 
button and grinning in your face, is saying anything com- 
plimentary about you. In a journey up the country, a fat 
Frenchman, who had equipped himself in an old mandarin 
coat, a huge pair of China boots, and a black wide-awake, 
was leaning upon a bamboo spear, while his boat was being 
drawn over one of those mud embankments which serve 



SHANGHAI TEA-GAKDENS. 225 

the purpose of our locks. He also was very mucli flattered 
at the politeness of an old man who prostrated himself 
three times before him, and chin-chin-ed him. Unluckily, 
an interpreter was present, who explained that this old man 
took our French friend for the devil, and was worshipping 
him in that capacity, according to Chinese rites. In fact, 
the Frenchman in his antique disguise rather resembled a 
Chinese idol. But ask the Frencli consul at Shanghai 
about this ; he can tell the story better than I can. 

Some of the best shops of Shanghai city open upon the 
tea-gardens ; some resound with the buzz of imprisoned 
insects and the song of caged birds; there are "curio" 
shops, where are to be seen antiquities of dynasties long 
anterior to the Christian era, carefully wrought by living 
hands ; there are caricatures of the English barbarians, one 
of which I cannot refrain from buying ; there are carvings 
in bamboo, very inferior to Canton ; there are shops for 
fans, and embroideries, and silks, decidedly inferior to 
Ningpo. There is also the studio of a portrait-painter, not 
probably a dangerous rival to Lamqua, of Macao. There is 
loud talking in that studio. A Yankee captain is inspect- 
ing a portrait of himself, which has been painted at a 
contract price of some twenty dollars. The Yankee is a 
man about forty, with streaks of gray in his bushy hair and 
beard, with a slight defect in one eye, a large nose, and a 
pock-marked face. Yet, withal, thanks to his affluence of 
hair and an expression of jaunty determination and devil- 
may-care go-aheadness, he is a manly-looking fellow. He is 
looking ruefully, however, at this counterfeit presentment 
of himself which is to go to the girl of his heart at New 
York. It is a most laughter-moving caricature of all the 
salient points of his physiognomy. The Yankee swears 
that it is no more like him than hickory nuts are like 
thunder. The artist has produced a small looking-glass, 
which he places beside the portrait, and, pointing to the 
gray hair, and the squinting eye, and the pockmarks of the 
];)ortrait, and then to the present originals from which they 
were copied, says triumphantly at each verification, " Hab 
got ? Hab got ? Hab got 1 How can make handsome 
man, 'spose no got handsome face V* Let us leave these 

Q 



226 CHINA. 

parties, for there seems likelihood of a hot dispute, and, 
arming ourselves with another cheroot as a defence against 
bad smells, retrace our steps through the city, and out at 
the east gate. 

We are again upon the Bund. The sun is down, and the 
European population are taking exercise in the short 
twilight. The merchants and their wives are returning in 
carriages or on horseback from their ride round the race- 
course, or are walking ; the missionaries and their wives are 
riding up and down on their ponies. The shadows grow 
deeper, and you can scarce recognize your acquaintances as 
they pass. | 

And now, Mr. Bull, it is time to go in and dress for 
dinner. I hope during our day's stroll I have given you 
some notion of the city and settlement of Shanghai, which, 
if you are a wise man, and open up the Yang-tse-Kiang, 
will be a most important place both to you and to your 
descendants for many a long generation. 

Hongkong, Oct. 30. 

After a rapid and most comfortable passage of four days, 
I am back " home " in Hongkong, just in time to keep you 
informed of the only matters having the least importance 
which have occurred since my departure for the north. 

You will have heard last mail by the news from Singa- 
pore that the Audacieuse and the French plenipo had at 
last arrived. The day after the departure of the mail, 
Baron Gros steamed into harbour, and with polite or kindly 
haste immediately proceeded unaccompanied to the Ava^ 
without even sending notice of his coming. The meeting 
of the two plenipos had the cordiality of the non-official and 
unceremonious meeting of two private gentlemen, one of 
■whom had been accidentally kept waiting, and the other 
anxious to express, by his manner and empressement, that he 
regretted the delay. Next day the harbour resounded with 
saljUtes, and the two ministers met at dinner at Government 
House. The Audacieuse returned to her anchorage off 
Lintin, and diplomatic communications have since then 
been frequent and, as it is said, amicable. 
i The gunboats are arriving daily, but Captain Sherard 



QUICK PASSAGE OF THE IMPERADOR. 227 

Osborn, who has to keep his chicken together, is not yet 
come in. It is necessary to tow these craft up against the 
north-east monsoon ; but it is scarcely worth while enume- 
rating the actual arrivals, for they will probably be all 
reported a short distance off by the steamer which takes 
this letter. 

It is a pleasure to be able to congratulate our Admiralty. 
They may be honestly proud of the achievement of the 
Imperador. On the morning of the 28th that fine ship 
steamed into harbour in admirable trim, after a passage, 
almost unrivalled, of sixty-one days (at sea) from England to 
Singapore. She brings 500 marines, and she brings them 
out in first-rate condition. Only fifteen men in all were 
on the sick list. Yesterday she proceeded up the Canton 
river to the "Wantung Islands, where barracks have been 
provided, and where, it is to be hoped, the men will retain 
their present health and efficiency. 

We are now in eager expectation of the arrival of the 
sister ship the Imperatrix, supposed to be about three days 
behind her. This mail will probably bring you more certain 
tidings of her. 

It is no secret that something is now about to be under- 
taken. We shall probably wait the arrival of the whole 
of the slender force allotted to us. 3,000 redcoats are not 
a too numerous army to bring to reason an empire of 
300,000,000 of people ; but so soon as we have all we are 
to expect, we hope to be able to tell you that Canton is in 
our hands. 

All our superfluous doctors and commissariat officers are 
off for India. It is understood that General Ashburnham 
and staff, and Colonels Wetherall and Pakenham, go by the 
next mail. General Straubenzee remains with us, and I 
hear but one sentiment with respect to this officer. Ho has 
impressed all here with confidence in him as a leader of 
energy and conduct. 



q2 



228 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PREPARATIONS FOR CANTON. 

Arrival of tlie American Plenipo — Proposed Course of Proceeding 
towards Yeh — Hongkong Rumours — Ai-rival of a Brigade of Marines 
— The Gunboats — Adhesion of the French — The Americans look on 
— Target Practice — Lord Elgin's Reconnaissance up the Canton 
River — Distant View of Canton — Whampoa — The French at their 
Anchorage — French Theatricals — Return of Count Putiatin — Tiio 
Japanese and the Presentation Steamer — News of the Death of 
JVIr. Beale, of Shanghai. 

Hongkong, Nov. 11. 
I HOPE to be able to tell you by the next mail that we are 
at least " before Canton." All our powers of force and per- 
suasion are arrived, or are upon the eve of arrival. Mr. 
Reade is come in his gigantic frigate, the Minnesota, and 
although the monster made an involuntary breach of 
etiquette in the number of guns fired, the plenipos have 
fraternized in cordial fashion. It is understood that on the 
16th the Calcutta flag-ship will change her anchorage for 
Tiger Island. The rest of our fleet will gradually gather 
about her up the river. Then, in deliberate strength, our 
heavily-armed vessels will move right up and occupy the 
river under the walls of Canton. They will clear the water, 
remove all sunken obstacles, protect the necessary recon- 
naissances of the land approaches to the city, and make 
matters comfortable for the final assault. Then the great 
Yeh will be summoned, not to treat, but to surrender the 
city. Should he neglect or refuse, proclamations will be 
issued directing the unarmed people to depart the city during 
the impending operations. Then will come the final scene 
— the landing of the marines and land forces, the shelling 
the forts, the breaching the walls, and the storm. 

According to all precedent, Hongkong is full of rushing 
rumours. " Yeh has been degraded." *' Yeh has abandoned 



AERIVAL OF THE GUNBOATS. 229 

the city." " Yeli lias asked to open negotiations." " Yeli 
will give up the city without a fight." " Yeh will die at 
his post." " Yeh has mined all the gates, excavated all the 
streets, turned every highway into a tiger-pit, putting- 
upright spears at the bottom, and light bamboos, covered 
with earth, over the top." " Yeh has 22,000 men within 
the walls, and 200 guns on the fortifications opposite the 
river." It will be hard if some of these opposing predic- 
tions should not turn out to be rather like the event, but all 
we know with any certainty is, that the Chinese govern- 
ment have been sending down troops from the north, and 
have been mounting guns upon the walls. 

The two sister ships, the Imperador and the Imperatrix, 
are now both arrived, and have discharged their care-o of 
marines in good health at Wantung, opposite the ruins of 
the Eogue forts. Captain Sherard Osborn, in the Furious, 
goes to Manilla to bring up the last tv/o of his squadron of 
gunboats. Captain Osborn has acquired great credit by the 
success with which he has brought all his chick cockatrices 
home — not to roost. To the Drake belong the honours of 
the race ; but they have all done well. Many were the 
adventures of these wee thiugs, all flight and sting, in their 
passage through the waste of waters. The big ships of com- 
merce, when they sighted one of these specks in mid-ocean, 
took various ideas of the unusual sight. Some bore down 
towards it as a wreck offering hope of salvage-money, and 
bore away again as they grew nearer, frightened at its vicious 
and piratical-looking hull. Some recognized the little daring 
vixen thing, and came near to see, dipping ensign and 
offering sea luxuries. One Scotch ship fairly bolted at first 
view, and crowded all sail to escape v/hen the terrible little 
cruiser manifested a desire for an interview. The com- 
mander of the gunboat had his reasons for a closer inter- 
change of compliments j he made all sail, started in pursuit, 
then got up his steam, and a regular chase ensued. At last 
the Scotchman was overhauled, having led the gunboat some 
way out of her course. The ofiicer boarded her in no very 
good humour, and asked why he had been led this dance, 
and whether the master did not know a pennant when he 
saw it. 



230 CHINA. 

" Eh," said tlie Scotcliman, *' I kenned vera weel what ye 
war ; but I thouglit sure eneufli ye'd just be in distress for 
sometliing." 

The Adelaide at this date has not been heard of, but, as 
her consorts have arrived, she may be daily expected. We 
are also entitled to expect a return of some 400 or 500 of 
the marines and troops lent to India. The authorities there 
have received the assistance they have obtained from the 
Chinese expedition with less acknowledgment than might 
reasonably have been expected, and quite neglected to avail 
themselvesof the mo^'a^niauence which might have been drawn 
from the sudden arrival of Lord Elgin with no inconsiderable 
nor inopportune force ; but I suppose they will keep their 
promise and send us back these men, the rather because 
there must soon be a glut of troops at Calcutta. They 
will probably arrive faster than they can be sent up the 
country. 

In a few days, therefore, we may reasonably expect to 
have 700 guns and 7,000 men in these waters. Of the latter 
we shall probably be able to land 4,000 ; but, alas, the great 
bulk of them will be blue jackets, — capital fellows afloat, 
but terrible stragglers ashore. Jack's habits all induce him 
to consider that going ashore means going upon a spree. 
Jack will help to take the city, or would take it single- 
handed ; but we must not trust him to hold it. 

I believe I may now say that the Baron Gros has deter- 
mined to co-operate in our enterprise. He has three frigates, 
two corvettes, and four gunboats here, and about 1,000 
men, whereof he can land about 600 seamen. We have 
plenty of force to do the work single-handed, and some delay 
may possibly be occasioned by waiting until he can get his 
frigate, the Capricieuse, now in dock at Shanghai, down 
southwards. So far, therefore, as actual assistance goes, 
perhaps we might as well have been alone ; but in other 
points of view this co-operation must be very satisfactory. 
What his casus belli may be I am not informed, and as it is 
no part of my business to speculate upon it, I take for granted 
that it is sufficient. It is clear, however, that it cannot be 
stronger than ours. The action of the French, therefore, 
^11 justify in the eyes of Europe the course which we are 



PREPARATIONS. 231 

now taking, and as tlie two squadrons will doubtless act 
cordially together, this will be another public proof of the 
friendship and common policy of the two nations. 

It is equally well understood that the Americans are to 
retain their position of lookers-on. Judging from the great 
draught of water of the Minnesota, even this " looking on. " 
must be a very distant view. 

The toi^idity of the last five months, therefore, has changed 
to the bustle of preparation. The seamen are being drilled 
to act ashore, the 59tli are being marched and counter- 
marched, targets are set up in the secluded valleys of Hong- 
kong, and the sharp ring of the rifle may be heard at early 
morn and at dewy eve. Every one who can smuggle himself 
on board a gunboat has been up the river to get a peep at 
the doomed city. Many who did not need this smuggling 
process have yielded to the same curiosity. General Ashburn- 
ham is said to be under orders for departure for India, and 
is about to exchange " Head-quarters House " for the Ava, 
Lord Elgin taking the house and the general taking the 
steamer. If these orders should be imperative in their 
character, I apprehend that nothing can be done until he is 
gone j for it would probably be inexpedient that operations 
of magnitude, such as must occur after the taking of the 
city, should be originated by a general whose engagements 
elsewhere will not allow him to conduct them to a close. 
The general, however, was loth to depart, and not unnaturally 
so. Colonels Wetherall and Pakenham, and Major Crealock 
have been hard at work for months arranging the plan of 
operations, and must be equally disappointed at having to 
leave their laboratory just at the moment of projection. 
Major Macdonald might reasonably expect to fight his way 
into the city of Canton, instead of joining his regiment in 
India when the hard fighting will probably be over. But 
altered circumstances compel altered arrangements. Our 
staff officers, and our doctors, and our commissariat are 
ludicrously disproportionate to our present force, and the in- 
terests of the public service must silence private hardships. 
When General Ashburnham, therefore, went up to Macao 
Eort and to the fort of the Fatshan Creek, it was, as I suppose, 
only to take a Pisgah look at the promised land. It is said 



232 CHINA. 

that he waits to see what the next mail may bring. Before 
this goes he may possibly have taken his departure. 

Lord Elgin, accompanied by the French Secretary of 
Legation and Colonel Foley, has also been up to Macao Fort, 
and taken a careful survey of the city from the top of the 
Pagoda. He called upon Baron Gros at the French anchorage 
at Castle Peak ^ay, and held long converse. The Chinese, 
who profess to be quite convinced that all this " bobbery," 
to use their word, is only to frighten them, and who still 
repeat, "Englishman no can take Canton," are quite certain 
that " Number one Mandarin" only went up to try and open 
negotiations with Yeh. 

I also have been cruising about in these waters. After 
four months' absence, it was pleasant to revisit, more tran- 
quilly than upon a former occasion, the fort on the Fatshan 
creek, now called " Seymour Fort," and to look again upon 
the city from the Macao Pagoda. I cannot detect any 
alteration in the defences of the city since I was last there. 
The Shameen forts at the end of the three-mile reach still 
look ruinous. Gough Fort seems to be surrounded by rather 
fewer tents than when I last saw it. All the traps and 
pitfalls are probably completed. There is, however, a closer 
interest now in bringing a powerful glass to bear upon the 
heights which must so soon be won by British daring, and 
in examining the ground along which our forces must 
proceed. It is broken ground, capital skirmishing ground, 
but very difficult for the transport of guns. Mr. Power, 
who now conducts the commissariat department, has 
organized a corps of 750 coolies — " Hakkas," or men drawn 
from a mountain district which has always had little respect 
for mandarin authority. They look very well when they 
are paraded at Hongkong, and they work very well ; but 
whether those fellows will drag field-pieces up over those 
inequalities in face of the fire from the fort is yet to be 
seen. I believe it is not proposed to bring this novel trans- 
port corps actually under fire ; but the question is, at wliat 
distance they will take fright. 

I passed also by Whampoa, which has not been seen 
except by the earl and the general and their protecting gun- 
boats since the commencement of the war ; — I beg pardon. 



WHAMPOA. 233 

I mean since the commencement of tlie misunderstanding 
between the local authorities at Canton and her Majesty's 
civil and military officers there. I only know by descrijDtion 
how populous and busy the place once was, how thronged by 
boats, how crowded by shipping, how echoing with drunken 
shouts, how rife with fierce debauchery. The town is appa- 
rently very moral now. There is scarcely a boat on the 
river. The docks are all destroyed, and the blocks of 
granite emulate the eccentricity of the blocks of the Bogue 
forts. Many of the wooden houses that advance upon piles 
into the river are losing their perpendicular, and leaning 
forwards like a drunken man poising himself; some are 
already down ; all look ruinous and desolate. Here and 
there a few Chinese were gathered together to stare at us 
as we passed, but they were more haggard than any China- 
men I have ever seen. They made no sign and laughed no 
laugh. They were probably the minions of vices locally 
extinct. 

I passed also by the French anchorage, and had some 
communication with their fleet. This is a beautiful spot in 
this clear cool weather, and I dare say they derive immense 
satisfaction in perforating the hills by their ball practice, 
and setting fire to the brushwood by their shell practice. 
But still I don't quite wonder that they should be ready to 
fight anybody in any cause to get a little distraction. The 
barons suite are all marquises and counts and grand seigneurs 
of high degree, who had come out with the idea of a sort 
of royal progress to Pekin. They have been six months 
at sea, cooped up in the Audacieuse, and are still in their 
floating prison. One of the officers said to me, " We get up 
every morning at daylight because there is such a deuce of 
a noise (tapage d'enfer) with washing the deck, that no one 
can sleep all day long, as he would wish, and we see always 
that same sea and those same rocks, and that everlasting 
sugarloaf hill — ce rCest 2^cis gai. Now and then we have 
our distractions. The admiral, who is very amiable, 
allows us occasionally a spectacle. But the sailors only play 
one piece, and the women are represented by two broad- 
chested mariners. One of them tells us in the course of the 
dialogue, in a mdle bass voice, ' Helas I vous voyez que je suis 



234 CHINA. 

helle. Comme c'est malheureux d'etre helle !' — Ce n'est 2'>c->s 
amusanV I hope their friends in Paris will cease to envy 
them, and sympathize with their sufferings. 

My letters from the North tell me that the Chinese have 
just issued an impertinent proclamation, warning the bar- 
barians not to venture into the interior, and declaring that 
even if they should not create disturbances there, punishment 
will await them. It is just as well that I made my survey 
of Hangchow before this proclamation appeared, for nobody 
doubts the power of the mandarins to incite the population 
to force on "a disturbance" with the most peaceable 
Europeans.* 

Count Putiatin is back in Shanghai. He has made a new 
treaty in Japan, and it seems that the terms are liberal, 
showing a tendency on the part of the Japanese to throw 
over their exclusiveness. Pussia has been granted land to 
build government storehouses, and the Japanese have bought 
several European merchant ships. They have heard of 
Queen Victoria's gift to the emperor, and are anxiously 
looking for her arrival. She is now being ornamented in 
Hongkong harbour, but she will disappoint the Japanese. 
She is neither a ship of war nor a pleasure yacht, and is 
specially ill adapted for the habits of the people for whom 
she is destined. The Dutch naval officers have been to see 
her, and chuckle at the little respect she will obtain for 
British naval architecture. 

I learn from the same source that Pekin is nearly in a 
state of famine. Pice is' said to cost 300 cash (about Is. 6<i.) 
a pound. The Pussian plenipo and the American commo- 
dore were about leaving for Hongkong. . 

The same letters tell me of the death of Mr. Beale, one 
of the Medici of Shanghai. He had accumulated an 
enormous fortune without contracting the limits of a most 
lavish expenditure. He had just resolved to return home. 

* Sir John Bowring scolded me as the cause of this proclamation. 
No doubt my inland journey was in breach of the treaty, and I should 
have had no cause of complaint had I been roughly used. Nor, per- 
haps, would mere curiosity have been a justification for penetrating 
into that jealously-closed city of Hangchow. But I had objects in 
view which were worth a little risk, and which were not dearly bought 
by a growl from the mandarins. 



DEATH OF MR. BEALE. 235 

I was his guest for some time at Shanghai, and was indebted 
to him for much information. He had discussed with me 
his plans for his new career in England, and his influence 
would have been great upon all questions relating to China. 
But while he was gathering in the threads of his multifarious 
operations. Death put his hand upon him. He died deli- 
riously, pointing out the headlands and the cities he fancied 
he saw in his voyage towards England. Well, Pascal says, 
" La mort est plus aisee a supporter sans y -penser que la 
pensee de la mort sans periV So perhaps he was happy in 
his death. I am told also by the same mail of the death of 
a young and honest-hearted missionary at Ningpo with 
whom I had had much converse. It is frightful to look 
back upon the number of youthful and energetic men whom 
I have known intimately during my few months' sojourn in 
the East, and who have succumbed to this climate. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A CHINESE DINNER. 

How Christians sometimes eat — A Chinaman's Aptitude for Cookery 
— My Cook at Hongkong — The Food of the Labouring Class — Of 
the Beggars — Of the Middle Classes— The Cookshops — " The 
Gallery of the Imperial Academician" at Ningpo — Description of a 
Dinner given by the Author at that Hotel. 

In cookery the Chinese hold a middle position, below the 
Erench and above the English. There is a certain degree of 
philosophy in a Chinaman's smallest act — he never does 
anything for which he cannot give a reason. He sees an 
especial connection between cookery and civilization — 
"wherein he agrees with some great names among ourselves — 
and he conceives that the English must be very low in the 
intellectual scale, and must hold their high rank only by 
brute force. An Englishman's mode of feeding is, says John 
Chinaman, the nearest approach to that of the savages of 
Formosa. He does the chief work of the slaughter-house 
upon his dinner-table, and he remits the principal work of 



236 CHINA. 

the kitchen to his stomach. '-'In remote ages, before we 
became civilized," a polite Chinaman once informed me, " we 
used knives and forks, as you do, and had no chopsticks. 
We still carry a knife in our chopstick-case ; but it is a rem- 
nant of barbarism, — we never use it. We sit dov/n to table 
to eat, not to cut up carcases." 

Sedentary and dyspeptic men of every race will think 
with the Chinese, that legs, shoulders, loins, heads, limbs, 
directly suggestive of the living animal, are common only to 
the banquet of an Englishman and a beast of prey. " Plain 
wholesome food " means a slice of red flesh and a crudely- 
prepared vegetable, and requires animal heat, intensified 
by labour or exercise, to digest and assimilate it. It is the 
food of man in a state of nature. This " plain food " is only 
wholesome in comparison with those poisonous compounds of 
grease and carbonized or saturated meat which in our inferior 
households are so fitly designated " made dishes." 

In London, where people's occupations do not prepare 
them to " eat like a hunter," civilization is invading the 
kitchen. Bad housewives say that " travel and the clubs 
have spoiled the men ;" they will no longer contentedly feed 
like dogs or tigers. Young men, who in the aggregate rule 
society, vote a household careless of the cuisine, to be 
mauvais genre ; and old men, each potent in his particular 
circle, have learned from those great practical chymists, Ure, 
and Soyer, and Francatelli, that it is possible to enjoy the 
pleasures of the table without the penalty of an after-sensa- 
tion of a looming apoj)lexy. 

In China, however, the natives see and are taught English 
cookery in its worst possible form. In Hongkong and 
Shanghai a dinner-table at the summer season is a melan- 
choly spectacle of spoiled food. The creatures to be eaten 
were necessarily killed the same day, and the tough tissues 
are as hard as death stiffened them. This is not the fault of 
the Chinese cooks. Every Chinaman has a natural aptitude 
for cookery. I know one little, lean, thread-paper anatomy 
at Hongkong, whose only teaching has been half a dozen 
lessons administered to him from the pages of a French 
cookery-book, and who will send you up a consomme aux 
oeufs poches, a filet de boeuf aux champignons, a salmi of 



THE FOOD OF THE CHINESE. 237 

tealj a salad, waferlike fried potatoes, and a sweet omelette 
in a style certainly not inferior to Vefoiir ; for the salmi 
I'd back liini against tlie world, and for the salad against 
any Englishman who ever inverted that best of Italian 
proverbs, " Molto d' olio, jooco cV aceto''' 

I dare say my hint that English cookery is not quite a 
perfect art will be considered very impertinent j but it has 
been so much the habit to ridicule the Chinese as filthy 
feeders, that if we are about seriously to consider their 
methods of preparing their food as one of the articles of 
their civilization, we must cast a glance homeward, lest we 
try them by a wrong standard. 

The one article of diet of the ordinary labouring class is 
rice. " I eat the rice of a barbarian hong " is a mode of 
expression I think I have already mentioned. It is the 
most wholesome grain to eat unfermenfced, much more 
wholesome than the boiled wheat of the Arabs, more nutri- 
tious than the boiled lumpers of the Irishman. If you look 
into a Chinaman's basin, you see that his simple dish is well 
cooked. Every grain rolls separate as he shovels it into his 
mouth.'"" 

Below this level the beggars — the dangerous classes of all 
denominations — undoubtedly eat dogs and vermin. Habit 
probably breeds a taste for such food; but I take it, the 
practice commences in necessity, not in choice. These 
people cannot procure a sufficiency of rice. I have seen 
them eating their dog broth, but neglected the opportunity 
of learning how it was prepared. 

If we ascend a little in the scale, we shall find the rice- 
bowl seasoned with a little patch of some vegetable curry, 
morsels whereof are at distant intervals delicately taken up 
by the chopsticks. 

AVhen we go beyond this, we get into a very doubtful 
class of comestibles. There are small travelling-kitchens 
heated with charcoal, and upon which stand saucers or 
microscopic basins filled with very neatly-prepared soups of 
flesh and vegetables ; but every street has its half-dozen 
cookshops. There are seething caldrons in which dump- 

* The labouring classes -undoubtedly eat rats; but tbpy are the field 
rats caught at harvest time, and dried in the sun. 



238 CHINA. 

lings filled with minced meat bob up and down, and wbicli 
are by no means unpleasant to the palate of a hungry 
and incurious Christian. I have lunched from them more 
than once in the tea-gardens of Shanghai city, and can aver 
that they are excellent to the taste, although perhaps no 
more trustworthy as to materials than English sausage-meat. 
There is also a frying of fish and flesh and fowl, and a 
bubbling of oil in many pans. As these are ostentatiously 
obtruded under the noses of the passer-by, the odour must 
be supposed to be exciting to a Chinaman's appetite. It is, 
however, decidedly the weak point of Chinese common 
cookery. "Whether that oil be castor oil, as many say, but 
as Hue denies, or tea oil, or oil expressed from the cotton 
seed, or which other of the twenty difierent vegetable oils in 
use in China, is of little importance. It is so foul and rancid 
that the stench it produces is intolerable, and the cookshops 
add most potently to the fearful scents of a Chinese town or 
village. Possibly the vapours from the pans of some of our 
own courts and alleys would not be more inviting ; but the 
frying is not performed in the public way. 

This, however, is not Chinese cookery any more than the 
sharp, unmistakably feline claws to be detected in the hare 
soup of a small traiteur in the neighbourhood of the Odeon 
is to be taken as an exemplification of French cookery. 

It is impossible now to get a real Chinese dinner at a 
Chinese private house. Your host thinks it an absolute 
necessity of politeness to serve his guest according to his 
country's fashion. I had looked forward to a dinner to be 
given by the Shantung guild of merchants to the English at 
Ningpo in the new temple ; but, alas ! the Shantung mer- 
chants hire the cooks of their English guests. 

Yet Ningpo is famed throughout all China for the excel- 
lence of its learning and the perfection of its cookery — 
excellences which, if my recollection of Oxford kitchens is 
not as rusty as my memories of its lecture-rooms, do not 
always go together. There is an examination at Pekin at 
which the Cambridge competitive system is adopted, and a 
sort of Senior Wrangler of the whole empire is declared. 
Some years ago, Ningpo had the honour of producing the 
successful candidate, and great was the joy of Ningpo. The 



A CHINESE DINNER. 239 

Ellis, or Lovegrove, of Ningpo, was then about erecting a 
new hotel, and instead of calling it " The Imperial Dragon," 
or " The Ten Thousand Years," he called it " The Gallery of 
the Imperial Academician." Under that title it holds repute 
of having, out of Pekin, the best cuisine in China. 

To this hostelry, in reparation for our disappointment at 
the hands of the Shantung guild, I invited, in September 
last, a good portion of the beauty and fashion of Ningpo, 
accompanying the invitation with a pair of chopsticks for 
preparatory exercise. After some deliberation, the enter- 
prise was thought worthy of patronage, for novelties at 
Ningpo are not numerous, and the invitation was accepted. 
A room was prepared, and the dinner ordered under grave 
advice ; and on the day appointed eight chairs, four of them 
containing English ladies, duly guarded by their lords, pro- 
ceeded in procession through the city gate and deposited their 
burden at " the Gallery of the Imperial Academician." 

The salon was more like a slice of a verandah than a 
room. Its front was open to the narrow street. The table 
was laid with the preliminary trifles provocatives to the 
coming repast. There was a small square tower, built up of 
slices from the breast of a goose ; a tumulus of thin square 
pieces of tripe ; hard-boiled eggs of a dark speckled colour, 
which had been preserved in lime, and whose delicacy is sup- 
posed to be proportioned to their antiquity ; berries and 
other vegetable substances preserved in vinegar ; a curious 
pile of some shell-fish, to me unknown, which had been 
taken from its shell and cut in thin slices ; prawns in their 
natural, or rather in their artificial red state ; ground nuts, 
ginger, and candied fruits. 

Everything was excellent of its kind, and the unknown 
shell-fish particularly good in flavour. I am afraid to say 
that the tripe, boiled to an almost gelatinous softness, was a 
creditable piece of cookery, but I know many Englishmen 
who would have devoured the small heap with great avidity. 
There was at first an air of suspicion in the manner we 
wandered over this light collation ; but this soon gave way 
as the fruits, the pickles, or the shell-fish commended them- 
selves to the several tastes. 

And now we sat down to the serious business of the 



240 CHINA. 

day. Each guest was supplied with a saucer and a porcelain 
spoon — they had brought their own chopsticks. A folded 
towel, just saturated with hot water, was placed by each 
saucer — this is the Chinese napkin — and two tiny metal 
cups, not so large as egg-cups, were allotted to every guest. 
At my side, to share our feast, and see that the " rites " 
were properly performed, sat the gravest of Chinamen. He 
wore his mandarin summer cap, for he was the interpreter 
at one of the consulates. 

The first dish was, in accordance with all proper pre- 
cedent, the birds'-nest soup. I believe some of us were 
rather surprised not to see the birds'-nests bobbing about 
in the bowl, and to detect no flavour of sticks or feathers, or 
moss. What these birds -nests are in their natural state I 
do not know, for I have no book on ornithology, and have 
never been birds'-nesting in the Straits. Their existence at 
table is apparent in a thick mucilage at the surface of the 
soup. Below this you come to a white liquid and chickens' 
flesh. It was objected that this w^as a fade and tasteless 
delicacy. But remark that these two basins are only the 
suns of little systems. The same hands that brought them 
in, scattered also an entourage of still smaller basins. These 
are sauces of every flavour and strength, from crushed fresh 
chilies to simple soy. Watch the Chinaman. How 
cunningly he compounds. 

" But, sir, you do not mean to say that you ate this 
' mucilage ' with your chopsticks ? " 

" No, madam, we scooped it with our saucers and ate it 
with our porcelain spoons." 

The next course was expected with a very nervous excite- 
ment. It was a stew of sea-slugs. As I have seen them at 
Macao they are white, but as served at Ningpo they are 
green. I credit the Imperial Academician's as the orthodox 
dish. They are slippery, and very difficult to be handled by 
inexperienced chopsticks ; but they are most succulent and 
pleasant food, not at all unlike in flavour to the green fat of 
the turtle. If a man cannot eat anything of a kind whereof 
he has not seen his father and grandfather eat before, we 
must leave him to his oysters, and his periwinkles, and his 
crawfish, and not expect him to swallow the much more 



THE STEW OF SEA-SLUGS. 241 

comely sea-slug. But surely a Briton who has eaten himself 
into a poisonous plethora upon mussels has no right to hold 
lip his hands and eyes at a Chinaman enjoying his honest 
well-cooked stew of heches de mer. 

During the discussion of this dish our Chinese master of 
the ceremonies solemnly interposed. We were neglecting 
the rudiments of politeness. No one had yet offered to 
intrude one of these sleek and savoury delicacies, deeply 
rolled in sauce, into the mouth of his neighbour. Efforts 
were made to retrieve the barbarian honour, but with no 
great success, for the slugs were evasive, and the proffered 
mouthful was not always welcome. 

The next dish was sturgeon skull-cap — rare and gelatinous, 
but I think not so peculiar in its flavour as to excuse the 
death of several royal fish. 

This dish being taken from its brazen lamp-heated stand, 
was succeeded by a stew of shark fins and pork. The shark 
fins were boiled to so soft a consistency that they might have 
been turbot fins. The Chinaman must have smiled at the 
unreasonable prejudices of the Occidentals when he saw som.e 
of us tasting the pork but fighting shy of the shark. He 
probably, however, did not know that the same Occidentals 
would eat with relish of a fish which they had themselves 
enticed to their angle by a worm or a maggot. 

Next in order came a soup composed of balls of crab. 
I have tasted this better prepared at Macao. It assumes 
there the form of a very capital salad, made of crab and 
cooked vegetables. 

Meanwhile the ministering boys flew and fluttered round 
the table, for ever filling the little wine-glasses with hot 
wine from the metal pots. There were three kinds — the 
strong samshu, for a very occasional " spike ;" the medicated 
wine, for those who, having once experienced its many 
flavours, chose to attempt it a second time ; and the ordinary 
wine, which is so like sherry negus that any one who can 
drink that preparation may be very well satisfied with its 
Chinese substitute. 

The Chinaman had drunk with each of the convives almost 
m English fashion, but in strict obedience to the Chinese 

R 



242 CHINA. 

rites, and ungallantly diallenging the male part of the com- 
pany first. 

And now Ave became clamorous for bread or rice. After 
a succession of not by any means gross, but certainly 
nutritious and mucilaginous dishes, the palate and the 
stomach craved some farinaceous food. Nothing was easier 
to procure. The boys — ^our own boys, accustomed to wait at 
our English dinners — brought in loaves at the lightest in- 
timation ; but our arbiter edendi interposed. Bread at a 
Chinese feast is contrary to the " rites." 

We consoled ourselves by throwing at him a decisive and 
unanimous opinion that this was the weak point of Chinese 
gastronomy. 

The porcelain bowls in their courses, like the stars in their 
courses, continued in unpausing succession. The next 
named was " the rice of the genii," meaning, I suppose, the 
food of the genii, for there was no rice in the composition. 
It was a stew of plums and preserved fruits, whose sweets 
and acids were an agreeable counterpoise to the fish and 
meat dishes already taken. Then we had a dish of a 
boiled hairy vegetable, very like that stringy endive which 
they call in France harhe de Capuchin; — then stewed 
mushrooms from Manchuria. Then we relapsed into another 
series of fish and meat entrees, wherein vegetables of the 
vegetable-marrow species, and a root somewhat between a 
horseradish and a turnip, were largely used. There was a 
bowl of ducks' tongues, which are esteemed an exquisite 
Chinese dainty. We were picking these little morceaux out 
with our chopsticks (at which we had now become adepts, 
for the knack is easily acquired), when we were startled by 
a loud Chinese " Ey Yaw!" This imprudent exclamation. 
drew our attention to the open front of our apartment. 
The opposite house, distant perhaps across the street about 
eight feet from us, presented the spectacle of a small crowded 
playhouse seen from the stage. It was densely crowded 
with half-naked Chinamen. They were packed in a mass 
upon the gallery and they were squatted upon the roof I 
believe they had paid for their places. They had sat orderly 
and silent all this time to see the barbarians dining. We 



POLITENESS AT A CHINESE DINNER. 243 

might have dropped the grass blinds, but it would have 
been ill-natured ; the Chinese did us no harm, and the blinds 
would have kept out the air ; so we went on eating, like 
Greenwich pensioners or Bluecoat boys, in public. 

So we continued our attentions to the ducks' tongues, and 
passed on to deers' tendons — a royal dish. These deers' 
tendons come, or ought to come, from Tartary. The 
emperors make presents of them to their favoured subjects. 
Yeh's father at Canton recently received some from his 
sovereign, and gave a feast in honour of the present. These 
must have been boiled for a week to bring them down to the 
state of softness in which they came up to us. 

Exhausted, or rather repleted, nature could no more. 
When a stew of what the Chinese call the ear shell-fish 
was placed upon the table, no one could carry his experiments 
further. An untouched dish is a signal for the close of the 
feast. The maitre d'hotel protested that he had twenty 
more courses of excellent rarity, but our Chinese master of 
the ceremonies was imperative, and so were we. Plain 
boiled rice, the rice of Szechuen, was brought round in little 
bowls, and of this we all ate plentifully. Confectionary and 
candied fruits, and acanthus-berries steeped in spirits, 
followed, and then tea. No uncooked fruit is allowed at a 
Chinese dinner. They have a proverb that fruit is feathers 
in the morning, silk at noon, and lead at night. I was 
assured by competent authority that nothing had been placed 
upon the table which was not in the highest degree whole- 
some, nutritious, and light of digestion. We certainly so 
found it ; for, adjourning to the house of one of the convives, 
we made an excellent supper that night. 

The master of the ceremonies now looked round him 
with a swollen and satisfied air, and — erupit mons — from 
his mouth came forth a loud sonorous noise, which a certain 
dramatist has not scrupled to bedeck with knighthood, and 
to christen Sir Toby. He, the Chinaman, seemed proud of 
his performance. We sat uncomfortable on our chairs, did 
not know which way to look, and some of us would have 
run away, had there been anywhere to run to. Some one 
who could speak his language gave him a hint which made 

R 2 



244 CHmA, 

him declare empliatically that it would be an insult to the 
founder of the feast if this testimony was not loudly given 
to the sufficiency of the entertainment and the pletion of 
the guests. It was with some difficulty that he was pre- 
vailed upon to turn over this chapter of the book of rites. 

And thus ended our Chinese dinner. Before we entered 
our chairs, we walked through the whole establishment, saw 
the reservoirs for preserving all the curious creatures we 
had been eating, and examined all the processes of prepara- 
tion, and the casseroles and ovens in which other dinners 
were then being prepared. Everything was as clean and as 
regular as in a first-rate European establishment. 

Of course, I do not affirm that this dinner was to our 
tastes, but it was one to which education and habit might 
very reasonably incline a people. It was eminently light 
and digestible, and, like the Chinese themselves, very reason- 
able and defensible upon philosophic grounds, but somewhat 
monotonous, tedious, and insipid. We must recollect, how- 
ever, that the higher classes in China never take exercise, 
and are necessarily a sedentary and dyspeptic class of feeders. 
It was unanimously resolved that the bill of fare ought to 
be preserved and the dinner described ; for, although several 
travellers have given the forms and ceremonies of a Chinese 
state dinner, and have indulged in a general jocoseness at the 
strangeness of its materials, no one has ever yet taken the 
trouble to inform himself as to what the dishes before him 
really did contain. 



24:5 



CHAPTER XXL 

AGRICULTURE IN CHINA. 

Soil of the Great Pla,ins — The best way of seeing the Agriculture of a 
Country is to shoot over it — Pheasant-shooting — Cleanness of 
Crops — Nature of the Crops — No Beast-feeding — Manure — Art of 
Agriculture practised under diflFerent Conditions in China. 

A REVISIT to the scenes of the Canton river has impressed 
me still more not only with the extraordinary beauty of the 
scenery upon its banks, but also with the singular geological 
formation of the country. Upon a first view, especially if 
the attention is absorbed by warlike operations, one does 
not observe the general coincidence in character between 
the district of the Pearl Kiver and that of the Yang-tse. 
We are struck rather by the points of difference. In the 
one, the eye meets at every point ranges of round-topped 
granite hills ; in the other, the vision wanders unchecked 
over a dead flat. Yet both are enormous deltas of alluvial 
soil, through which the internal waters descend in one large 
river and a thousand streams. In the north, the deposits 
were spread upon the level bed of a great sea, and silted 
it up into a solid plain ; in the south, the rich mud, 
brought down into an archipelago of granite islets, drove 
out the sea, and produced a region of rich valleys intersected 
or dominated by granite mountains. The crops we see 
upon the banks of the Pearl, and upon the banks of the 
Wangpo, owe their luxuriance to the same alluvial qualities 
of the soil. On the Canton river they are now just gather- 
ing their second crop of rice, the bananas are still clustered 
xipon the trees, and the patches of sugarcane look green and 
reedy. I should have been glad of an opportunity of exa- 
mining the agriculture of the south more nearly. Three 
Englishmen at Hongkong resolved, in the spirit of Chevy 
Chace chivalry, to hunt, or rather to shoot, for three days 
upon the enemy's territory. I was to have accompanied 



246 CHINA. 

them, but was drawn awsv by the more imperative duty of 
accompanying the reconnaissance up the river. On my 
return, I found they had accomplished their vow. Bristling 
with revolvers, and accompanied by five coolies to each 
man, they had landed at Mirs Bay, passed through several 
villages, beat with pointers and beaters the hills overhanging 
the battlements of a walled city, and, in spite of angry 
looks and muttered maledictions, had returned with whole 
skins and a bag of sixteen pheasants and some quail. 

The best way to see the agriculture of a country is to 
shoot over it. A landlord who shoots over his estate knows 
the rotation of crops in every field, and his tenant will not 
wisely be too persistent in his straw crops. With a view 
to this same sort of minute acquaintance with the agricul- 
ture of the Flowery Land, I employed some of my enforced 
leisure at the north in little expeditions after the China 
pheasants. I used to take a Soochau boat and go away up 
the rivers and creeks, some twenty or thirty miles, and 
anchor off some likely spot for the night. Next morning 
my servant went to the nearest village and hired three 
peasants with long bamboos, and we went forth scouring 
the country. There is no game-law in China. The land is 
free to all, and consequently the result was not great sport. 
Moreover, every inch of ground was covered by some stand- 
ing crop, and I had no dogs. Hospitable as the Shanghai 
folk are, they do not like lending their dogs, and I sighed 
in vain for my own faithful four-footed friends. The only 
resource was to try whether the habits of the wild pheasant 
of China, which has cost no one a guinea to preserve, are 
the same as those of their more costly brethren of England. 
I used to steal in early morning, and again just before sun- 
down, to the sides of the bamboo plantations. The ground 
round these plantations, which are always attached to 
houses, is cultivated in lands, like allotment grounds in 
England — a land of cotton, another of pease, a third of 
indigo, a fourth of white turnips, and so on. But in China, 
as in England, the pheasants are not easy to approach at 
feeding-time. 

I seldom got a shot at less than seventy yards, and if I 
brought down my bird " a runner," he was lost to me and 



PHEASANT-SHOOTING. 247 

my heirs for ever. The fields were all alive with sharp-eyed 
indigenes, who watched the course of the wounded game, and 
followed it up when I was gone. In the daytime I had a 
very numerous following of spectators, and I shot many 
birds of curious plumage for their amusement, and for the 
satisfaction of my own curiosity. It was very critical 
shooting. It was scarcely possible to point your gun with- 
out finding a Chinaman at the end of your barrels; and if you 
should pepper one of these spectators or cotton-pickers by acci- 
dent, you would be bound u|) in bamboo thongs and sent to 
Shanghai in a cage. Altogether, therefore, the October 
shooting in China is not quite worth following for itself 
alone. But for the exercise, and as an excuse for exploring 
the country, it is greatly to be cultivated, and the birds, 
when you do get them, are very handsome. All the cocks 
have the white ring round their necks, and, strangely 
enough, the cocks get up more freely before you than the 
hens. 

After investigation carried on with these opportunities, I 
am convinced that England has nothing to learn from 
China in the art of agriculture. It is true the Chinese have 
no summer fallows j but then they have no stiff clays. 
They have no couch-grass, no thistles contending for the 
full possession of the land, as we see in Wales; no uninvited 
poppies, no straggling stalky crops, the poverty-stricken 
covering of an exhausted soil. At rare intervals we see a 
large, rich-coloured coxcomb flaunting himself among the 
cotton ; but, generally speaking, there is not a leaf above 
the ground which does not appertain to the crop to which 
the field is appropriated. Kice and cotton are the staples 
of the great district of which I am now speaking. These 
crops often extend in unbroken breadth over tracts of 
thousands of acres. The pease, and wheat, and indigo, and 
turnips, and bringalls lie in patches round the villages. 
The ground is not only clean, but the soil is so exquisitely 
pulverized, that after a week's rain I have sometimes looked 
about in vain for a clod to throw into a pond to startle the 
water-fowl. 

We may be accustomed to mark the course of agriculture 
throughout the breadth of our own land, — the light loams 



248 CHINA. 

of our Lincolnshire wolds, the turnip and barley lands o-f 
Norfolk, the strong flats of Suffolk ; then westward to the 
rich pastures of Leicester, the mixed dairy and arable farms 
of Derbyshire, across the coalfields to the successive and 
attenuating oat crops on the shores of Bala, and along the 
valley of the Tivey, — yet we shall see nothing like the 
cultivation of this great plain of China. 

The art is exercised under different conditions. The 
Chinese cultivator is not asked for milk,* or butter, or 
cheese, or mutton, or beef. The Chinaman does not object 
to a little buffalo or goats' milk with his rice, and if some 
curious accident should have brought buffalo flesh into his 
basin, he will eat it. But he rarely or never buys it. In 
his recent voyage of discovery up the " Great Junk," or 
" Great Western Biver," Commander Elliott and Captain 
Edgell saw droves of buffaloes upon the uplands to the 
north of Canton, and we know that milk and mutton are 
common food in Tartary ; but I am speaking of those parts 
of China where agriculture is supposed to reach perfection, 
not of the mountain pastures. Pork, poultry, and vege- 
tables, and the creatures that swim or crawl about his rivers 
and canals, are the Chinaman's natural dainties. Stall-feed- 
ing, therefore, would not pay even so moderately (taking 
sale of stock only into consideration) as it does with us, and 
grass is only seen growing rank on graves. One or two 
buffaloes to turn the irrigating- wheel and plough the paddy- 
fields, two or three goats, a breeding sow, a quantity of 
those ugly long-legged fowls so ignorantly called Cochin- 
Chinas in England, and a flock of ducks and geese — such is 
the live stock of a Chinese farm which maintains a hundred 
labourers. 

Stable-yard manure, therefore, is scant. Nor is it much 
coveted. Human ordure is, in a Chinaman's opinion, the 
only perfect fertilizer. This is collected with the most op- 
pressive care. In the cities, and in the neighbourhood of 
cities, enormous dark open earthenware pans offend the 

* There was a current story in the Canton factories, that an English- 
man scolding his servant because there was no milk on his breakfast- 
table, was answered, "How can? how can? That goat hab Avhilo, 
(run away), that pig hab kill, that woman hab sick — how can ? " 



"SOKDIDA RURA." 249 

senses at every turn, poisoning the air, inviting, and too 
often receiving, the contributions of the passers-by. The 
privilege of collection is sold for a large price, and the 
Cantonese have a proverb that a fortune every day passes in 
that form out of their gates. In the suburbs every cottage 
has its open earthenware cesspool. In the country every 
house has its public latrine, ostentatiously placed with its 
open doorless entrance to the public path. In these temples 
the Chinese worship with a deliberate solemnity which 
savours of the ostentatious performance of a religious rite. 
The numbers and suffocating effluvia of these opposition 
manure-traps are to an Englishman a never-ceasing horror. 
They constitute his first and his last impression of the 
country. Like everything else in China, the favour awarded 
by law and custom to the collection of manure is used as a 
contrivance for extortion. At Ningo two immense pans lie 
opposite to the entrance-door of the first native merchant in 
that city, awaiting the payment of 2,000 dollars, which is the 
price of their removal. The boats which convey this pro- 
duce through the inner waters will bring uj) close to you at 
night, and will remove only for a consideration. I knew an 
Englishman at Shanghai who was obliged to pay thirty 
dollars upon one occasion of this kind ; but then he, in 
Britannic fashion, had knocked the extortioner into the 
midst of his liquid cargo. 

These details of the " sordida rura " are not pleasant to 
write ; at all times '' difficile est j^ro^orie coTiimunia dicere ; " 
but if the object be to depict or to comprehend China, they 
must be written and read. This manure is sprinkled over 
the plant : it is too precious to be worked into the ground. 
The straw and the burnt hulra of the cotton-plant are 
returned to the soil — that is all. The Chinese transplant 
every root of rice by hand, just as we should transplant 
young trees, and each has its little blessing of liquid manure 
as it is sown. This homoeopathic system would not do, I 
apprehend, with our hungry clay lands. 

The art of agriculture is, I repeat, exercised under different 
conditions in China to what it is in England. Give an 
English farmer a thousand acres of vegetable loam of an un- 
explored depth, — a reticulation of watervv^ays, which enables 



250 CHINA. 

him to flood at pleasure every acre of Ms soil — an unfailing 
supply of manual labour at 4:d. a-day — and cheap communi- 
cation, bj tidal creeks, with large markets ; give him also 
periodical rains, perfect drainage, and abundance of quickly- 
ripening sunshine, and see what crops of corn, and pulse, and 
potherbs he would produce. I say nothing of tea and cotton, 
and mulberry-leaves ; for our friend Giles would have to 
scratch his head a little before he could start on a race to 
overtake these Chinamen, who are 4,000 years of practice 
ahead of him. 

But then, per C07itra, it must be recollected that this park 
of Ceres is infested by poachers. These happy fields are 
overrun by extortionate mandarins, pillaging soldiers, 
marauders, who in small bands are called robbers, and in 
large bands aspire to be rebels, and to be led by " kings," 
river pirates, who levy blackmail, and occasional swarms of 
locusts which darken the sun. Simple folk may chatter 
about the horrible injustice of coercing the governing 
powers of China ; but a government which exacts and does 
not protect, is only a badly-organized brigandage. I see no 
act of duty in rescuing a fly from a spider, or a sparrow from 
a hawk, yet I do not regard either deed as unlawful. Quite 
sure I am that the larger interests of humanity would be 
subserved by any train of circumstances which should bring 
the Chinese population to comprehend not only our Western 
notions of probity and honour, but also our Western habits 
of working those notions into our practice. 



251 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WAITING FOR FORCES. 

The Flag-ship moves up to Tiger Island — Departure of General 
Ashburnham and Staff — Indifference at Home — Preparations — 
Waiting for the Adelaide and Assistance — Attitude of the Four 
Powers — The American Frigate Minnesota — Lord Elgin's Demand 
upon Yeh — Remarks upon the changed Course of Proceedings — 
Author's Expectation that we shall be in Canton before the end of 
the Year — Mr. Wade discovers ''The Hall of Patriotism and 
Peace" — The Grand Master of this Lodge is flogged — List of 
Ships in the Chinese waters — Correspondence between Lord Elgin 
and Yeh. 

Hongkong, Nov. 28. 
Ox the 18tli, the Calcutta flagship moved from her moor- 
ings in this harbour and proceeded towards Canton. She 
is now anchored off Tiger Island, and is occupied in throw- 
ing shells TA^th marvellous precision into three large targets. 

Next day the Ava, Peninsular and Oriental steamer, de- 
parted for Calcutta, taking from us General Ashburnham, 
Colonels Pakenham and Wetherall, Major Macdonald, and 
Dr. Dempster. Major Crealock was left here (as deputy- 
assistant quartermaster) at the request of General Strau- 
benzee. 

We have now, therefore, reduced our staff to the measure 
of our straitened means, and can marshal our little force 
with some hope of permanency in our arrangements. 

I subjoin to this letter a list of the vessels of war, classed 
according to their position in these waters. Pei'haps there 
may be persons in England who may still feel some slight 
interest in a British fleet and a small English army engaged 
in the siege of a vast city. 

Incalculable as are the consequences which will follow 
from the operations about to commence here, I have little 
heart for the task of detailing the preparations. I feel that 
I shall be listened to like a child prattling its nonsense 



252 CHINA. 

out of season. You are absorbed in tbe contemplation of 
the fall of Delhi. Upon the morrow of the accomplishment 
of a righteous national revenge, and in the presence of those 
bitter memories of butcheries and foul defilements which 
sere so many English hearts, to speak of China will seem to 
many almost an impertinence. 

The tone of the letters received by the mail which arrived 
here four days ago affords little hope that you will give one 
thought to us, and offers little encouragement to the men 
who are engaged in the service of their country in this deadly 
climate. We are not jealous of the absorbing sympathy 
which follows our army in India, — no honours can be too 
high for them, no gratitude too warm, — nor do we fall one 
line below you in the rage excited by the horrors enacted 
there. Unquestionably, most unquestionably, the operations 
in China are of infinitely inferior interest and importance to 
those in the Bengal presidency ; but that is no good reason 
why these operations should be ostentatiously ignored oj* 
needlessly interrupted. Yet some of your public men seem 
anxious to show the sincerity of their terror by a gratuitous 
sacrifice of our prestige and interest in this neighbourhood. 
Sir Charles Napier's voice is only a little louder than that of 
others when he raises the cry of " Sauve qui peut^' gallantly 
leading a Bacchanalian party at Bury in a career of tumul- 
tuous panic, and shouting, " We must give up China 
altogether^ 

Wliy must we give up China altogether, Sir Charles 1 
Having heard of what happened in Borneo, do you think 
there are no Nana Sahibs in China, and that no Delhis, or 
Cawnpores, or Lucknows are possible there 1 Or do you 
imagine that the fleet which you regret cannot get up to 
Delhi is so useless, that it cannot make impression upon 
Canton ? Fortunately, our fleet has other leaders, and our 
councils other heads. I do deprecate this fluttering, noisy, 
witless friijht. Wherever the soldiers and sailors of Eno;- 
land are serving, they have a claim to some share of the 
attention of their country. 

But to my chronicle. 

Three days ago, there was an impression throughout the 
colony that a decisive advance was to be made on the 



WAITING FOR FORCES. 253 

morrow, and a lodgment effected upon the large island of 
Honam, immediately opposite tlie factories. Either this 
intention was never entertained, or it was reconsidered, for 
" the day passed over, and every one is again asking, " What 
are we waiting for 1 " 

All things are in a state of preparation. The four mortars 
destined for the special benefit of Gough's Fort are gone up ; 
the ships are all clustered up and down, within three hours' 
steaming of the city walls ; the marines are all housed in 
their barracks at "VYantung, ready to be embarked at a 
moment's notice ; the storeship is close to the scene of 
operations ; the Furious has been denuded of her useless 

> maindeck guns, and, powerful still in her upper-deck arma- 
ment, has been fitted to convey Lord Elgin and his suite to 
a point whence he can commence his "negotiations;" the 
Erench are ready, for I am told that the co-operation of the 
Gapricieuse is not made a sioie qua non; our 600 engineers, 
artillerymen, and men of the 59th, can be embarked and 
' carried up in twenty-four hours. Moreover, it is whispered 
that the proclamations to the citizens are all printed offj 
and it is loudly asserted by gentlemen, whose means of 
correct information upon such a subject are, I confess, not 
obvious, that Lord Elgin has his ultimatuTii in his pocket, 
carefully translated into choice mandarin Chinese. Why, 
then, does he not go up and send in his summons, and open 
the ball 1 

To people who are not intolerant of plain reasons for 
plain facts, the answer seems easy. We are waiting for the 
Adelaide and the Assistance. The first vessel started with 
the Imperador and Imperatrix (arrived three weeks since), 
the second Avas despatched, or was promised to be despatched, 
from Calcutta in time to be due at this moment. These two 
ships have nearly 1 000 marines and infantry troops on 

' board ; they are expected from hour to hour, and such an 
increase to our little force is not to be lightly esteemed. 
The Adelaide has not been rej^orted here since she left 
England. Her antecedents are not encouraging ; but surely 
she cannot now delay many days. I was glad of an oppor- 
tunity to congratulate our Admiralty upon the splendid 
voyages of the Imperador and Imperatrix, for there is some- 



254 CHINA. 

tiling better and more grateful to one's mind in this world 
than to be always carping. Moreover, the magnificent 
achievement of sending those sixteen little gunboats across 
the globe without a single accident, and with the occurrence 
of only a single death on board, is a triumph of which any 
governing department may be proud. Let me add that the 
power of impromptu choice of sixteen young men, whose 
zeal would send them into those uncomfortable crafts, and 
whose seamanship would carry them through so perilous a 
voyage, is a shining fact, most honourable to the whole 
service. But still, when we find this lagging log, this 
Adelaide, married to those swift ships that have been so long 
in port, the exclamation will force itself, " How on earth 
could there be so little discretion ? " 

However, we are waiting for the Adelaide and the Assist- 
ance. Meanwhile, Lord Elgin has taken possession of 
General Ashburnham's vacated quarters — Head-quarters- 
house ; the French plenipotentiary is at Macao, and so is 
the Russian plenipotentiary, Count Putiatin ; and Lord 
Elgin has just gone in a gunboat to hold sweet converse 
with his diplomatic compeers. Meanwhile, Mr. Commis- 
sioner Reed, careful not to involve himself in entangling 
alliances, remains in sulky solitude on board his monster 
frigate, the Minnesota, doing penance probably for his 
countrymen's wickedness in knocking down that Chinese 
fort. It is rather fortunate, perhaps, that the intentions of 
the Minnesota are so placable, and that, though she had such 
large teeth, she has made a compact with herself not to bite ; 
for the only place in the China seas that she could possibly 
bombard would be this city of Victoria. Great power 
which the possessor wills not to exercise, is imposing; but great 
power which the possessor cannot exercise, savours rather of 
the ridiculous ; and I am afraid the Minnesota in the China 
seas is suggestive of the latter sentiment. It is a pity that 
Mr. Heed has not more appropriate vessels and a more 
chivalrous part to play ; for the few who have been brought 
into contact with him here speak of him as an able and a 
courteous gentleman. 

Count Putiatin's appearance has, I apprehend, no purport 
beyond that of paying his respects to Lord Elgin. His 



THE FRENCH CASUS BELLI. 255 

account of his treatment at tlie Peilio differs entirely from 
that given by the Chinese. He makes no secret of saying 
that he is dissatisfied with the reception accorded to him by 
the authorities at the port of Pekin. Probably the fact is, 
as I conjectured at the time, that the Chinese report was 
dictated by Chinese policy ; but it may be just possible that 
the count's unreserved expressions of discontent may not be 
quite so frank as they appear. However, he is here only in 
his little steamer, and can have no immediate part in the 
measures about to be taken. 

It happens, quite naturally, that all men are exhausting 
themselves in speculations as to what the terms of Lord 
Elgin's demand upon Yeh will be.* You will probably 
become acquainted with this document long before we shall, 
but I feel very little interest about the matter. We all 
know what the general character of the paper must be, just 
as well as Lord Elgin can. It must demand compensation 
for all damage done ; it must demand a revision of the broken 
treaties ; it must demand immediate entrance into the city ; 
and it must demand either the surrender of the city, or of 
the forts that command it, as a material guarantee, until the 
compensation is paid, and the treaty settled. Less than 
this would be ridiculous. 

Whatever this demand may be, it must necessarily be 
communicated to, and concerted with, the French plenipo- 
tentiary. He also has his demand to make. The policy of 
Erance is altered since the days when one of the missionaries 
sneeringly described it as " Protection de nos missionnaires 
nationaux, honneur du pavilion, surete des Equipages ; mais 
pas un coup de canon." Baron Gros has to demand satis- 
faction for the life of a Erench subject, who was most bar- 
barously murdered by persons in actual official authority ; 
satisfaction which has been for two years constantly denied 
to a continued series of demands unbacked by force. He 
will probably think himself entitled to demand some security 
against a recurrence of such outrages. So that, in the end, 
our requisitions upon the Chinese Government will probably 
not be far from identical. 

The demand is printed at the end of this chapter. It was not written 
until a fortnight after the date of this letter. 



256 CHINA. 

After what I liave written upon the subject, you will not 
be surprised to find me rejoicing that the united plenipoten- 
tiaries have come over to the common-sense view of the 
way in which these demands should be made. I never 
could understand how it could be more consistent with 
diplomatic etiquette to send our missives to the emperor 
by the hands of a petty buttonless mandarin, at the mouth 
of a little muddy river, rather than by the hands of the 
man whose position is that of secretary for affairs with 
foreign maritime nations. Such is Yeh's office. To use a 
lawyer's phrase, service upon him is as good service upon the 
emperor, as service upon Lord Clarendon would be service 
upon Queen Victoria. The fi.rst idea was analogous to 
serving a demand upon Queen Victoria upon the mayor of 
Gravesend. Of course. Lord Elgin will not treat with Yeh 
— at least, I should hope not — unless he speaks in the name 
of his sovereisju. In his own name he can do nothino* but 
surrender Canton. But we are bound to infer that an 
officer of state will do his duty — a duty pointed out by 
imperial edicts and by treaties — and, whatever may be our 
particular relations with him, will transmit our communica- 
tions to his court. 

If we are to treat these voluntary outlaws from national 
society according to the technical courtesies of the laws of 
nations, surely this is the more regular course. Yeh is the 
emperor's agent, just as Lord Clarendon is Queen Victoria's 
agent. The scope of Yeh's authority is to transact all 
business with maritime foreign nations, and to receive com- 
munications, or petitions, as the edicts call them, addressed 
by them to the emperor. I have laboured this point often 
before in these letters, and circumstances have forced the 
authorities to take the same view at last. 

That by force or by capitulation we shall have possession 
of Canton before this year is closed, I have no moral doubt. 
It will be time then to speculate upon ulterior proceedings. 
The object, however, to which those proceedings should be 
directed ought to be kept constantly before the public eye, 
and must engage the public attention. The stake is too 
valuable to be left unwatched. If it does so happen that 
your house is on fire, that is no reason why you should put 



THE "HALL OF PATRIOTISM AND PEACE." 25T 

yourself in sucli a fluster while you are putting it out that 
you let. Mr. Koff ruu away with your strong box, and Mr. 
Slick elope with your ledger. I return, therefore, and shall 
return, ictihus crebris, to my unwelconie task of hammering 
for attention to English interests in China. 

A curious instance has just occurred of the promptitude 
and ingenuity with which the Chinese seize upon occasions 
for extortion. Rumours had reached the ears of the admiral 
that some Chinamen were levying contributions in the towns 
and villages on the banks of the river ; and that they were 
doing so in the name of the English fleet. Commander 
Fellowes, in the Cruiser, accompanied by Mr. Wade, the 
chief of the interpreter staff) were sent ujd to inquire into 
this. These officers, with a small force, landed, and pro- 
ceeded from village to village, prosecuting their inquiries 
under much discouragement ; for the suspicious inhabitants 
apparently imagined that the collectors of the barbarian 
tribute were come among them. It was only by slow 
degrees that Mr. Wade gained some credit to his decla- 
rations, that he was not come to "squeeze." Then the 
quick eye of the commander detected a row-boat, built to 
imitate a man-of-war's-boat, but having points of difference 
enough to show a seaman that it had been constructed by 
Chinese hands. Soon afterwards Mr. Wade's attention was 
attracted to a notice posted in one of the most remote vil- 
lages, and purporting to proceed from the honourable English 
nation. This proclamation stated that some of the hus- 
bandmen had not paid the regulated grain-tax due to the 
English fleet for protecting their crops, and threatened the 
defaulters that if the amount were not paid upon a certain 
day, the ships would commence firing upon the villages. 
Following up this clue, the exploring party at last found 
that there was a society calling themselves the '•' Hall of 
Patriotism and Peace," who were in active collection of this 
tribute money ; and that they actually had a prison, well 
filled with victims, within musket-shot of the ships. Of 
course, the prisoners (six of whom were found loaded with 
chains) were set at liberty ; and the admiral has circulated 
a notice in Chinese, disavowing any connexion with such 
exactions. It was believed, however, that the Chinamea 

S 



258 CHINA. 

who contract to supply the fleet with provisions were at the 
head of this society ; and subsequent inquiry discovered 
that there was a small fleet of row-boats, some got up to 
imitate English boats, and others having Chinese equip- 
ments and mandarin banners, which lurked by day in the 
creeks, and came out at night. These boats all belonged to 
the '• Hall of Patriotism and Peace," and they levied con- 
tributions alternately in the name of each of the belligerent 
powers. The grand master of this lodge has been treated 
to four dozen lashes, and has had his tail cut off" ; but he is 
no Chinaman if he will not incur a similar flogging for a 
similar object to-morrow. 



SHIPS OE WAR ON THE CHINA STATION. 
At Hongkokg. 

British. — The Algerine, gun-boat, 3 guns. Lieutenant Forbes, com- 
mander; the Bittern, sloop, 12, Lieutenant Goodenough ; the Bustard, 
gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant Hailowes ; the Clown, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant 
W. Lee ; the Coromandel, steamer, 3, Lieutenant Douglas ; the Dove, 
gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant Bullock ; the Drake, gun-boat, 3, Lieutenant 
Arthur ; the Emperor, steam yacht, 4, Lieutenant Ward ; the Firm, 
gunboat, Lieutenant Nicholas ; the Furious, steamer, 16, Captain 
Osborne ; the Haughty, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant Pauli ', the Hercules, 
hospital, 10, Dr. G. Burn ; the Janus, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant W. H, 
Jones ; the Kestrel, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant W. H. Rason ; the Minden, 
store-ship, 4, Elles, master ; the Opossum, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant 
Campbell, commander ; the Starling, gun-boat, 2, A. J. Villiers ; the 
Surprise, despatch steamer, 4, S. G. Creswell ; the Sybille, ship, 44, 
Commodore Elliot ; the Tribune, steamer, 31, Captain Edgell ; the 
"Volcano, steamer, 3, Hockley. 

American. — The Levant, sloop, 18, Commander Smith ; the Min- 
nesota, steamer, 50, Captain Dupont ; the San Jacinto, steamer, 15, 
Commodore Armstrong, Captain Bell. 

French. — The Meurthe, steamer, 12, Commander M. de Chenez. 

Dutch. — The Medusa, steamer, 18, Captain Fabius. 

Spanish. — The Don J. Juan, steamer, 6, Brionnes. 

At Macao. 

Portuguese. — The Amazona, lorcha, 6, Captain Escarnieha ; the 
Mondeg'o, brig, 20, Commodore Tavares. 

American. — The Portsmouth, sloop, 16, Commander Foote. 
Russian. — ^The America, steamer, 6, Commander TschihatschoiF., 



SHIPS ON THE CHINA STATION. 259 

The Beothers. 

French. — The Audacieuse, steamer, 50, Captain Coville ; the Ava- 
lanche, gun-boat, 6, Commander Lalond ; the Dragonne, gun-boat, 6, 
Commander Bang ; the Fusee, gun-boat, 6, Carpigna ; the Marseau, 
steamer, 6, Captain Lamotte ; the Mitraille, gun-boat, 6, Commander 
P. E. Beranger ; the Nemesis, frigate, 50, Eear Admiral S, de 
Genouilly and Captain Eeynaud ; the Phlegethon, steamer, 8, C^iptain 
Leveque ; the Primanguet, steamer, 8, Commander Veignaud. 

In Caxton Eivee. 

British, — The Acorn, sloop, 12, Commander Hood ; the Acteeon, 
surveying- sloop, 26, Commander Bate ; the Banterer, gun-boat, 3, 
Lieutenant Pirn ; the Calcutta, ship, 80, Eear Admiral Seymour and 
Captain Hall ; the Cruiser, steamer, 17, Commander C. Fellowes ; the 
Elk, sloop, 12, Commander J. F. C. Hamilton ; the Esk, steamer, 21, 
Captain Sir E. M'Clure ; the Forester, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant Innes ; 
the Highflyer, steamer, 21, Captain Shadwell ; the Hesper, steamer, 2, 
Commander Hill ; the Hornet, steamer, 17, Commander Dowell ; the 
Inflexible, steamer, 6, Commander Brooker ; the Lee, gun-boat, 3, 
Lieutenant Graham ; the Leven, gun-boat, 3, Lieutenant Hudson ; the 
Kankin, ship, 50, Commander Hon, K, Stevv-art ; the Niger, steamer, 
14, Commander Cochrane ; the Plover, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant \Yyn- 
niatt ; the Eacehorse, sloop, 14, Captain Wylmshurst; the Sampson, 
steamer, 6, Captain G. S. Hand ; the Slaney, gunboat, 3, Lieutenant 
Hoskin ; the Staunch, gun-boat, 2, Commander L, Wiedraan ; the 
Watchful, gun-boat, 2, Lieutenant J. A. Whitshed ; the V.^oodcock, 
gunboat, 2, Lieutenant E. J. Pollard. 

At Amot. 
British. — The Comus, ship, 14, Commander E. Jenkins. 

At Foochow. 
British. — The Camilla, sloop, 16, Commander Col vile. 

At Nixgpo. 
British. — The Nimrod, steamer, G, Commander S. Dew. 

At Shanghai. 

British, — The Cormorant, gun-boat, 4, Lieutenant Saumarez ; the 
Pique, ship, 36, Commander Sir F. W. Nicolson, 

French. — TheCapricieuse, frigate, 40, Captain Collier ; the Durance, 
steamer, 12, Commander Chovin. 



260 CHINA. 

It will be convenient to the reader to have Lord Elgin's 
letter before him, and at some sacrifice of chronological 
regularity I have added Yeh's reply and the earl's rejoinder. 

*' The Earl of Elgin to Commissioner Yeh. 

" Hongkong, December 12, 1857. 

" The undersigned has the honour to apprise the Imperial Commis- 
sioner Yeh, &c., that he is the bearer of letters of credence, accrediting 
him as ambassador extraordinary from her Majesty the Queen of Great 
Britain to the Emperor of China ; and further, that he has been 
specially appointed and deputed by her Majesty the Queen of Great 
Britain as herMajesty's High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China, 
with full powers under herMajesty's royal sign manual and the Great Seal 
of the United Kingdom, to settle the differences which have unfortunately 
arisen between certain of the authoi'ities and subjects of her Majesty 
■the Queen of Great Britain and certain of the authorities and subjects 
of his Majesty the Emperor of China, and to negotiate and conclude 
with the minister or ministers who may be vested with similar powers 
;and authority by his Impei-ial and Eoyal Majesty the Emperor of China, 
such treaties, conventions, or agreements, as may obviate future mis- 
-jnderstandings, and tend to develop commercial relations between 
the two countries. 

" The government of her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, in 
•appointing this special mission, is animated by the sincerest feelings of 
goodwill towards the Chitiese people and its government. It has 
■ observed with gratification the happy results which have followed on 
the enlarged facilities for commercial intercourse between Great 
Britain and China provided under the treaty of 1842. The industrious 
subjects of his Majesty the Emperor have derived therefrom increased, 
returns for the products of their labour. The duties of customs have 
supplied timely resources to the imperial treasury. Free intercourse 
has engendered feelings of mutual esteem between natives and foreigners. 
In a word, at all the ports of China opened to foreign trade, save one, 
commerce has presented itself with its accustomed attendants, national 
■wealth and international goodwill. 

" To this favourable picture there is unhappily one exception. By 
repeated insults to foreigners, and by the refusal to carry out faithfully 
-the stipulations of treaties, the authorities of the province cf Kwang- 
tung have frequently, during the period in question, put in jeopardy 
the peaceful relations of China with the trea,ty powers. Great Britain, 
France, and America, have successively been compelled to seek, by 
menace or by the employment offeree, satisfaction for wrongs wantonly 
inflicted, until, finally, an insult to the British flag, followed by the 
refusal of the Imperial Commissioner to grant adequate reparation, or 
even to meet in the city the representative of her Britannic Majesty, 
for the purpose of effecting an amicable settlement, has forced the 
officers who are charged with the protection of British interests in this 
quarter to have recourse to measures of coercion against Canton. The 



LOSD Elgin's ultimatum. 261 

contest thus commenced has been carried on by the Chinese authorities 
in a manner repugnant to humanity and to the rules of warfare recog- 
nised by civilised nations. Acts of incendiarism and assassination have 
been promoted by the offer of rewards. Under the influence of these 
provocations, innocent families have been plunged into mourning by 
the kidnapping of private individuals ; and vessels engaged in the 
peaceful pursuits of commerce have been treacherously seized, and the- 
European crews and passengers barbarously murdered. 

'•' The undersigned thinks it right to remind the Imperial Commis- 
sioner that the government of her Britannic Majesty, in its endeavours 
to terminate a state of affairs which has led to these deplorable results,, 
has not confined its efforts to representations addressed to the imperial- 
oScers on the spot. In the year 1849 a communication was, Vjy the 
express command of Viscount Palmerston, her Majesty's Secretary of ' 
State for Foreign Affairs, transmitted to the imperial government at 
Pekin, warning it of the consequences that would ensue from the nonsr 
fulfilment of treaty engagements, and terminating in these words : 
* Let the Chinese government well consider these things, and whatever 
may happen in future between the two countries that may be dis- 
agreeable to China, let the Chinese government remember that th& 
fault thereof will lie upon them.' And again, in the year 1854, Sir 
John Bowring, her Majesty's Plenipotentiary, urged upon the Impfcriai 
Commissioners, who Avere deputed to confer with him at the mouth of 
the Peiho, the necessity of granting to British subjects free access to 
the city of Canton. These representations, however, prompted by a 
spirit of conciliation and humanity, have been unheeded, and the- 
result has only served to prove that the forbearance of the British 
government has been misunderstood by that of China, 

" In the conviction that the season for remonstrance is past. Great 
Britain does not stand alone. The disregard of treaty obligations, and 
the obstinate refusal to redress grievances which have forced the' 
British authorities to have recourse to arms, have aroused the just 
indignation of the government of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of 
the Fi-ench. The governments of England and France are united in 
their determination to seek, by vigorous and decisive action, reparation 
for past, and security against future, wrongs. 

" Under these circumstances, the undersigned thinks it his duty tOf 
state distinctly to the Imperial Commissioner that he cannot assume 
the responsibility of arresting the progress of hostile operations against 
Canton, until the following demands of the British government are- 
absolutely and unreservedly conceded : the complete execution at 
Canton of all treaty engagements, including the free admission of 
British subjects to the city ; compensation to British subjects and 
persons entitled to British protection for losses incurred in consequence- 
of the late disturbances. 

'•' If these moderate demands, and those preferred on behalf of the 
Emperor of the French by his Imperial Majesty's High Commissioner 
and Plenipotentiary, be frankly accepted by the Impei-ial Commissioner 
Yeh within the period of ten days from this date, the blockade of the 
river will be raisedj and commerce will be permitted to resume its 



262 CHINA. 

co-urso. But the English forces, in conjunction with' the forces of the 
French, will retain the island of Honan and the forts on the river as a 
material guarantee until the terms of a treaty for regulating these and 
all other questions pending between the government of Great Britain 
and that of China shall have been agreed to between the undersigned 
and a plenipotentiary, of equal rank, appointed by the Emperor of 
China to negotiate with him, and until the treaty so agreed lapon shall 
have been ratified by their respective sovereigns. 

" If, on the contrar}^, the Imperial Commissioner shall meet these 
demands by a refusal, by silence, or by evasive or dilatory pleas, the 
undersigned v.'ill deem it to be his painful duty to direct the naval and 
military commanders to prosecute, with renewed vigour, operations 
against Canton, reserving to himself the right to make, in that case, on 
behalf of the British government, such additional demands on the 
government of China as the altered condition of affairs may seem, in 
his eyes, to justify. 

'* The undersigned, &c. 

" (Signed) Elgin and Kincaudine." 



" Commissioner Yeli to the Earl of Elrjin. 
" [Translation.] 

" Yeh, Imperial Commissioner, Governor-general of the Two Kwang, 
&c.. makes a communication in reply. 

" On the 12th instant, I received the letter sent to me the same 
day, and v/as highly gratified to learn that your Excellency had been 
sent with plenipotentiary powers to Canton, 

" By the commercial relations ensuing on the establishment of the 
treaty between our two countries, the mercantile communities of both 
have alike been advantaged. The letter under ackuovv'ledgment ob- 
serves, that * to the favourable picture presented at the ports of China, 
there is one exception.' Nov/, during more than a century that your 
Excellency's nation traded at Canton, its trade was with Canton alone ; 
no such thing was known as four other ports. They were first opened 
by the treaties of 1842 and 1844. Canton had had, it is true, its 
own ways of trade long established — so far, indeed, it differed from the 
other ports ; but its commercial intercourse has been thr-oughout con- 
ducted on the same principle as theirs ; nor has there been, any moi-e 
(at Canton than elsewhere), any ' insult to foreigners.' 

'^ As to the question of admission into the provincial city of Canton, 
no article whatever relating to this exists in the treaties of 1842 and 
1844. It was in March, 1847, that the Plenipotentiary Davis attempted, 
at a moment's notice, to raise the question. He prescribed a terra of 
two years (within which the right was to be conceded) ; but before one 
3^ear had elapsed, the unsatisfactoriness of his conduct in many par- 
ticulars had been complained of by merchants who returned home for 
the purpose, and he was recalled. He was replaced by the late 
Plenipotentiary Bonham, subsequently to whose arrival in Kwantung 



yeh's reply to lord elgik 263 

there passed, in 1849, a long correspondence between him and the late 
Commissioner Seu, Discussion respecting admission into the city was 
finally dropped, and the Plenipotentiary Bonham issued a notice from 
the government offices (at Hongkong), to the effect that he, the 
governor, would not allow foreigners to enter the city. On this, I 
myself, then governor in concert with Seu, then commissioner, repre- 
sented to his late Majesty, canonised as the perfect, in a memorial, that 
the English had finally dropped the question of admittance into 
Canton, and we had the honour to receive in reply the following 
Imperial Decree : — 

" ' The walling of cities is for the protection of the people, to the end 
that they may turn their capital to the best account, &c. Respect this/ 

"It is also reported, on the authority of an English newspaper, of 
1850, that a royal (lit., national) letter from the Queen arrived at Hong- 
kong, to the address of the late Plenipotentiary Bonham, to the follow- 
ing effect : — 

" 'We are informed of everything regarding Tien-tsin and the five 
ports of China as detailed in the representation (of Mr. Bonham). The 
Crovernor* in question has, without doubt, shown great sagacity in the 
course he has followed. He was aware that Seu, Governoi'-General of 
the Two Kwang, was secretly devising measures in which Yeh, 
Governor of Kwangtung, was also taking pa-rt, and that they had to- 
gether moved the Chinese government to send from Pekin a secret 
expedition of the Solonf vessels of war for the defence of Tien-tsin. 
But though our vessels of war could have been easily worked {i.e., by 
pushing and pulling) along the shores (of the Peiho) to fight with these, 
Bonham, knov/iug what was becoming his own nation (or Goverment), 
and being well acquainted with the usages of China, confined the pur- 
pose of his visit to the ports of China, to an observation of the condition 
of the country, prosperous or otherwise. Were he to have fought, the 
Chinese v/ould have said that our people were entirely in the wrong-. 
It is hence evident that our Governor Bonham has managed matters 
very satisfactorily ; by no offence against reason or right has he caused 
lis anxiety : he is very much to be loved. Leb Bonham be rewarded 
with the title of V/ei-li-pa.:]: (The Queen) also conferred on him a badge 
of honour to be borne on his person, very goodly to behold ; and the 
English authorities and merchants at Hongkong went in their dresses 
of ceremony to. offer him their congratulations.' 

" Thus the merchants of your Excellency's nation (showed that they) 
thought the Plenipotentiary Bonham right and the Plenipotentiary 
Davis wrong. It is doubtless the dutjj- of your Excellency'-, who is come 



* '' Governor" — great chief of soldiers — the term used by the com- 
mon people at Hongkong. 

t A Mongol tribe. 

X There is a confusion between Sir G. Bonham's Knighthood of the 
Bath and his Baronetcy. "Wei-li-pa," a Chinese suggests, stands for 
*• Ba-li-mei," supposed to be Anglo-Chinese for Biu-onet. It is not a 
Chinese term. 



264: CHINA. 

here in obedience to yoiii' instructions, to imitate tlie conduct of the 
Pleniijotentiary Bonham. It is equally imperative that you should 
decline to imitate the conduct of the Plenipotentiary Davis. 

*' With respect to that passage in the letter under acknowledgment 
which says that, ' until the terms of a treaty shall have been, agreed to 
between the undersigned and a plenipotentiary of equal rank appointed 
by the emperor of China to negotiate with him, &c.,' in 1850, the late 
Plenipotentiary Bonham went in person to Shanghai, and detached 
thence an officer to Tien-tsin, to request once more admission into the 
city. lu 1854, the Plenipotentiary Bowring went himself to Tien-tsiu 
and entreated Avith instance* to be admitted into the city; also that 
the treaty should be reconsidered. His Majesty the emperor, holding 
that whereas the treaties of 184:2 and 1844 were ratified by the late 
emperor, canonised as the perfect, there was not in the agreement so 
sanctioned by his late Majesty, and which was to last ten thousand 
years with a view to the preservation of a good understanding for 
evermore, any place for alterations, and that the order of proceeding 
that had resulted in those advantages which, from the time the treaties 
w^ere made, had accrued to Chinese and foreigners alike from com- 
mercial intercourse, had been, in no respect other than what was in 
accordance with the treaties, was satisfied that these were good and 
sufficient. The cessation of discussions regarding admittance into 
Canton was for his Majesty a point on which the fiat of his late Majesty 
bad been received ; and as the treaty of peace for ten thousand years 
had been in like manner ratified by his late Majesty, it would have 
been equally improper to alter this. Hence, although on both occa- 
sions, that (officers of) your Excellency's government repaired to Tien- 
tsin, imperial commissioners f were sent to receive them, no propo- 
sitions respecting fresh regulations (of trade) were allowed to be con- 
sidered. The officers were desired to return to Canton and conduct 
business there in obedient conformance to treaty. (And so) now, no 
officer of China, be his rank what it may, could venture to act other- 
wise than in accordance with the sacred will (of the emperor.) 

"Again, your letter says ' that there must be compensation to British 
subjects and persons entitled to British protection for losses incurred 
in consequence of late disturbances,' 

" The misunderstanding of last October was caused thus : — The 
Chinese Government having arrested some Chinese criminals, Consul 
Parkes wrongfully gave heed to the unsupported testimony of the cap- 
tain of a lorcha, who asserted that the government executive, when 
they came on board to seize the guilty parties, hauled down the 
British ensign. He was not aware that no flag was seen flying by the 

* The term is one commonly used in closing petitions. The " Digest 
of the Statutes " employs it in speaking of Russia's solicitations for a 
Commei'cial Treaty in 1793. 

i' There is a little confusion here. An imperial commissioner was 
sent to meet Sir J. Bowring and Mr, MacLane in 1854. None, of 
course, came to meet Mr. Medhurst in 1850. 



YEh's reply to lord ELGIN. 265 

executive when they boarded the vessel ; that, as stated by the sailors 
seized, the flag was at the time down in the hold, and that it was con- 
sequently plain beyond a doubt that no flag was flying at all. The 
lorcha was built by, and in the employ of, Soo-a-ching, for whom her 
captain obtained a register. The crew were consequently all outlaws 
of the inner land {i.e. offenders against the laws of China). The 
prisoners, Le-ming-tae and Liang-hien-fu, both pleaded guilty to acts 
of piracy on the high seas. To this VVu-a-ching bore witness. It was 
established that the criminals before mentioned were notorious pirates. 
On the repeated representation of Consul Parkes (however) I returned 
the twelve prisoners to him. Feeling* and justice were thus alike 
satisfied ; but Consul Parkes, instead of receiving them, suddenly, and 
without a cause, commenced hostile operations ; attacked and destroyed 
the forts along the different approaches, for several days in succession 
bombarded the pi'ovincial city, and on three occasions sent parties of 
English troops to fire houses and buildings in different directions. 
Millions of people were eye-witnesses of these things. There is not a. 
native of any foreign state who is not aware of them. At the very 
commencement every Englishman and every other foreigner, with a 
sense of justice, did all that in them lay to dissuade Consul Parkes from 
proceeding, but he would not listen. He declared, too, that he would 
be personally responsible for all the loss they might incur, and in 
January last he went to Hongkong, and made out an account of their 
losses with all the merchants who had suflFered ; which shows that he 
was taking their compensation on himself. The method of effecting 
this has long been settled ; with it China has, in fact, no concern. Her 
merchants, alas ! have sustained an amount of injury graver than the- 
losses that have fallen on those of your Excellency's nation. (But) 
the same rulef applies to both. My court is thronged by the 
gentry and people of the city and suburbs, imploring me to 
write to your Excellency to inquire into the matter, and dispose 
of it impartially. I have not made their petition the subject of a, 
despatch ; but if you will not believe me, I will inclose copies of them 
in my next reply, for your Excellency's perusal and guidance. As to 
Honan, its gentry and people are fierce and energetic. J In April, 1847, 
when the merchants of your Excellency's nation wanted to lease ground 
in Honan, the gentry and people presented a petition, generally signed, 
to the Plenipotentiary Davis, who notified to them, in his reply, that 
the matter should stand where it was. Your letter talks of a military 
occupation of Honan and of the forts along the river ; but if you could 
not proceed once before, even with such a measure as the building and 
leasing of warehouses there, how should it be possible to station troops 



* '^ Feeling," viz., the feeling of unwillingness to act discourteously 
towards the authority of a friendly power. 

t That is, each must bear its own losses. — Translator's Note. [It 
would appear, however, from the context, that Yeh means that Mr^ 
Parkes ought to pay for both.] 

i Intractable. 



266 CHINA. 

on Honan ? The forts ?Jong the river have been built at the expense 
of the gentry and people, for their protection against piracy. An 
attempt on the part of the troops of your Excellency's nation to occupy 
these will, I fear, produce a state of irritation which may grow into a 
serious misunderstanding. (If it do) let it not be said that I did not 
speak in time, or that I did not do all that in me lay to provide for 
your safety. 

" The propositions brought forward in your letter have been sug- 
gested, it appears to me, by some mischievous person at your side ; 
they are not your Excellency's own conceptions. I have long heard or 
your Excellency's great experience and discretion ; of the universal 
esteem in v.'hich you are held in your own country ; the great trust 
■which you have come to Canton to discharge, towards your own 
government, is naturally the termination of the ti'oubles have existing, 
not, assuredly, the creation of (fresh) troubles. Your Excellency's acts 
"will, I feel sure, anticipate my confidence in your perfect sense of 
justice and thorough impartiality. 

" The words ' commerce shall resume its course,' in your letter, are 
additional evidence of your Excellency's sense of justice and practical 
knowledge. Ever since the treaty was made, in all their commercial 
dealings with foreigners, the merchants of China have invariably 
behaved as they ought. It is not from any hinderance interposed by 
China that no foreign merchant-vessel has been here since last October. 
By your Excellency's declaration now made, that ' eommei-ce between 
natives and foreigners shall resume its course,' you justify to their 
complete satisfaction the high estimation in which you are held by all 
classes of j^our own countrymen ; what is more, you enable yourself 
to meet the anxious expectations of the commercialists of every other 
country. 

" To conclude, our two nations have ever considei-ed themselves as on 
friendly terms with each other, and the continuance of trade between 
native and foreigner on its accustomed footing can, of course, be satis- 
factorily arranged in correspondence between you and myself. 

''I accordingly reply to you, availing myself, &;c. 

'■'A necessary communication. 

"Eeen-fung, 7th year, 10th moon, 29th day (l-ith December, 1857.)" 



" The Earl of Elgin to Coriimissioner Yeh. 

''Furious, Whampoa, Deceraher 24, 1857. 

" The undersigned has received the communication which the Im- 
perial Commissioner Yeh did him the honour to address him, under 
date the 14:th instant. 

"The undersigned has failed to discover in this communication, 
which he has attentively perused, any indication on the part of the 
Imperial Commissioner of a disposition to accede to the moderate 
demands which, in his communication to the Imperial Commissioner of 



CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN" LORD ELGIN AND YEH. 267 

the 12tli instant, he preferred on behalf of the government of Great 
Britain, 

"Pie is, therefore, reluctantly compelled to recall to the recollectioii 
of the Imperial Commissioner the closing pai-agraph of that communi- 
caption, which is conceived in the following terms : — 

'''If, on the contraiy, the Imperial Commissioner shall meet these 
demands by a refusal, by silence, or by evasive or dilatory pleas, the 
undersigned will deem it to be his painful duty to direct the naval and 
military commanders to prosecute, with renewed vigour, operations 
against Canton, reserving to himself the right to make, in that case, 
on behalf of the British Government, such additional demands on the 
Government of China as this altei-ed condition of affairs may seem, in 
his eyes, to justify.' 

" The undersigned has now to inform the Imperial Commissioner 
that he has called upon the naval and military commanders to prose- 
cute, with renewed vigour, operations against Canton ; and to add 
that, in accordance with the terms of the intimation given in the 
■words above quoted, he formally reserves to himself the right to make, 
on behalf of the British Government, such additonal demands as the 
altered condition of affairs, produced by the Imperial Commissioner's 
refusal to accede to terms of accommodation, may seem, in his eyes, to 
justify. 

" The undersigned, &c." 



*' Commissioner Yeli to the Earl of Elgin. 
"[Translation.] 

"Yeh, Imperial Commissioner, Governor-General of the Two 
Kwang, &c., makes communication in repl}'. 

*' On the 24th instant, I received your Excellency's letter of the 
same date, and acquainted myself with its contents. 

" In my answer to your earlier letter I replied to every proposition, 
point by point, specifically and minutely ; (yet) in the letter under 
acknowledgment you say that you have failed to discover in the com- 
munication which you have attentively perused, any indication of a 
disposition to accede * to the moderate demands preferred on behalf of 
the government of Great Britain. I shall endeavour to re-state clearl}'- 
to your Excellency what I said before. 

" To go back : in October last year, Mr. Consul Parkes, without any 
cause, commenced hostilities, attacked the forts along the different 
approaches, and thrice sent troops to fire buildings and dwellings in 
different directions. The gentry and people had suffered sadly by 
this, and on your Excellency's arrival in Kwantung, last July, as I 
have heard, presented a petition to you on the subject. No steps 
having as yet been taken in the case, crowds of gentry and people have 
come to my court discontented, and imploring me to write to your 

* See Note 1. 



268 CHINA. 

Excellency to make equitable decision therein ; and because I did nov 
address your Excellency on the subject, they were going to Hongkong 
again to clamour for redress at your Excellency's place with all their 
might. By various shifts I have dissuaded them (from this proceeding), 
attributing what happens entirely to Consul Parkes's want of sense on ?„ 
particular occasion, that your Excellency might be spared this trouble 
(or difficulty). This (shows) the best disposition on my jjart to be 
'conceding.' * 

"(In the next place) ever since your Excellency's countrymen began 
to trade at Canton, the merchants of China have, in every instance, 
conducted themselves towards them with propriety. To the proposition 
in your former letter, 'commerce shall resume its course,' I gave the 
fullest assent. How, then, can I be charged with ' refusing V f On 
the contrary, there is plain proof that I promised ij: (to concede what 
was asked). 

"As to the passage in the letter under acknowledgment, *if tho 
commissioner shall meet these demands by silence,' in my last reply I 
answered every question in its own order ; in no wise then was I 
'silent.' And as to the other passage, 'language of retrocession and 
refusal,' § I shall instance my remarks on the late Plenipotentiai'y 
Bonham's abandonment of the discussions respecting admittance into 
the city. My last reply detailed clearly how, for his satisfactory 
administration of that question, he was honoured with the praises of 
all classes of your countrymen ; in no wise, then, did I use ' language 
of retrocession and refusal.* 

" To conclude, our two nations regard themselves as on friendly 
terms with each other. This being the case, there can be nothing 
which makes it impossible for us to consult together and arrange 
satisfactorily by what means, in the words of your Excellency, 'com- 
merce may resume its course ;' (which declaration made||) vv'hat becomes 
of my refusal to accede to terms of accommodation ? 

" Pray let your Excellency, who has a sense of justice, and an ex- 
perience of business, once more closely examine and carefully re-peruse- 
my last reply. 

"I accordingly reply to you, availing, &c. 

" (December 25, 1857.)" 



*' Notes ly Mr. Wade on Commissioner Yeh's Letter dated 
December 25, 1857. 

"iNTotel. 

'''ACCEDE.' The term by which I had rendered this in Chinese 
is composed of two words, — 'Jang,' amicable concession, as opposed tc 



* See Note 2. t See Note 3. J See Note 4. 

§ See Note 5. II See Note 6. 



CORRESPOXDEN-CE BETWEEN LORD ELGIN AND YEH. 269 

■unyielding tenacity, of which strife is the consequence ; and 'heu,' to 
promise or undertake performance or compliance, 

" It will be seen below that, for his own purposes, the Commissioner 
divides the combination, and deals with each pai-t of it separately. 

"Note 2. 

"See note above. The Commissioner means: 'Had my intention 
been the opposite of conceding, I should not have dissuaded the peti- 
tioners from a course which boded strife.' 

"Notes. 

" The Chinese here quoted is from that part of the earl of Elgin's 
letter of the 12th, which wa.s repeated iu his lordship's letter of the 
24th : ' If the Imperial Commissioner shall meet these demands by a 
refusal/ &c. 

"Note 4. 

"This is the second part of the combination referred to in Note 1. 

" Note 5. 

"The words translated 'retrocession and refusal' are not in the 
letter sent ; they have been substituted for those representing ' dilatory 
and evasive.' The characters Yeh employs make us accuse him of 
' backing out, and definitive refusal.' I am not sure that much^ if 
anything, is intended by the change. 

" Note 6. 

"The Commissioner means to imply : 'and it was made at the close 
of my first reply,' the language of which he has employed pretty- 
generally in this. 

" (Signed) THOMAS WADE.'* 



270 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

FREE TRANSIT THROUGH CHINA. 

Necessity of Free Intercourse — Export Duties on Tea — Land Tax — 
Transit Duty — Increase of Duties — Origin of the Increase — Deten- 
tion of Tea Cargo Boats — Silk Export Dues — Magnitude of Woo- 
chang — Capacity of China. 

"When we have got this city of Canton, about the neck of 
which we are now tightening the lasso, we must use it for 
the purpose of preventing future wars, and establishing a 
feeling of mutual regard between the people of the country 
and ourselves. There is only one v/ay in which this can 
ever be effected. We must break down the door of parti- 
tion. If the bureaucracy of China ivill remain in the v/ay, 
we must walk over it. But we must have free and unre- 
stricted intercourse. I do not propose this as an easy point 
to gain. It Avill require great tact and decision in our pleni- 
potentiary to obtain the privilege, and great study and fore- 
sight to hedge it about with the proper securities. You will 
get nothing till you show you are irresistible, and you will 
then get everything you show yourself resolved to have. If 
Lord Elgin has the perspicacity to see and the courage to 
follow this bold, safe course^ you people at home, and espe- 
cially you men of commerce at home, must support him, or 
he will fail. If he has not, you must push him, force him, 
or supersede him ; for he will deserve to fail, and must fail. 
This is the key of the whole position. Gain it, and, in the 
words of a Chinese merchant, with whom I often discussed 
this question, " All men will be glad." He meant, and I 
mean, all men except the corrupt officials. 

The mandarins have only lately discovered that they have 
it in their power to tax the barbarians by levying transit 
imposts upon articles of barbarian necessity. Year by year 
this power has been cautiously brought into use, and its 
strain will continue to increase until the imposition becomes 



HOW THE MANDAPJXS TAX OUR TEA. 271 

too grievous to be borne. I have liitLerto said notliing upon 
these transit duties on Chinese exports; but I think I ought 
to record a few facts on this matter, although I dare not 
labour the question as I did the far more vital matter of 
British manufactures. 

Let us take the great staple, tea. In former times — that 
is to say, until within the last few years — the only tax upon 
tea was an impost in the shape of a land-tax ; a rent of so 
much per mow, or rood, paid by the cultivator. In passing 
by Hangchau there was a transit levy of three cents per 
picul (133 lb.), a mere nominal registering duty. Sometimes, 
if the mandarin at the Ta Kwan was popular or powerful, 
he was able to get an extra sum of two mace a picul, some- 
thing more than Is. a cwt., for himself; but this was always 
thoroughly understood to be a " Mandarin squeeze-pigeon," 
and might have been resisted if it had been worth while. 

Now, however, every picul of tea passing that same 
custom-house pays a duty of 5 taels 3 mace, or nearly od. a 
pound on every chest of tea — a tremendous duty when the 
prime value of this article is taken into consideration. The 
teas I now speak of are those which come down from the 
Bohea-hills, but those which traverse greater distances are 
subject to still farther exactions. Formerly the only 
custom-house for their duties was at Hangchau, but now 
every district has its little Kwan. The finer teas Avhich 
come from Ningchau, or Hoopak, or Hoonan, pay from 8|- 
to 9 taels per picul before they are embarked — nearly Qd. 
per pound. The rich green tea districts, the produce of 
which is attracted to the great emporium of Woochang, pay 
a transit duty of 6 taels 8 mace, instead of the old exaction 
of 2 mace. Part of the recent increase of tea trade at 
Foochow is occasioned by the circumstance that the teas 
from that port pay 2 taels less than those which are obliged 
to pass by Hangchau ; but this can be altered at any moment 
by the caprice of the local mandarin, or by a motion of the 
Vermillion pencil. This power of taxing the barbarians has 
only recently been discovered. It is currently reported that 
it was first brought into action to refund the sycee silver 
paid out at the end of the last war. It will be of no use 
that English Chancellors of the Exchequer reduce the tea 



272 CHINA. 

duties at one terminus of the voyage if Chinese Chancellors 
of the Exchequer ca,n raise the duties at the other terminus. 
Of course, there will be no lack of Solon geese in England to 
make the recondite discovery that the Chinese have a right 
to levy what export duties they please on their own produce. 
In strict Christian ethics this is as undoubtedly the fact as 
that we ought to give a man our cloak if he steals our coat. 
But in this bad practical world those high Christian ethics 
are eminences which we look up to, but never climb to. Tea 
is an English necessity and a Chinese monopoly. If John 
Chinaman insists upon heavily taxing John Bull's tea^ 
sooner or later, upon one pretence or another pretence, there 
will be ill blood and spilt blood. The only way to prevent this 
is to fix the legal export duty by treaty, and to go up to the 
'places loliere the tea is grown and buy it of the groioer. If 
the Yangtse were open, and if we could buy in the markets 
of Woochang and Hangyan, we should get our teas at a duty 
of 5 mace a picul, or one thirty-fifth part of the present 
" squeeze." Moreover, we should pay for this tea with our 
woollens and our shirtings. Before the Yangtse was closed 
by the rebels, one Chinaman at Hangyan used to take 
monthly 30,000 pieces of English shirtings ; he now does 
not take one piece in a twelvemonth. 

This is not all. The exactions of the mandarins extend 
to the means of transit. The cargo boats are pressed for 
" military services," and a bribe is necessary to set them 
free. A hundred other extortion traps beset this produce 
•on its way to the coast. Nothing but the presence of the 
European purchaser upon the spot can be of the least avail 
to prevent a limitless taxation of our tea. It is for you, ye 
teatotallers, that we are burnishing our bayonets and fitting 
the fusees into our ten-inch shells. 

So again of silk. Formerly there was no export duty 
upon silk. Now there is an export duty of 10 dollars a 
bale, which they talk of raising to 12^ dollars, and there is 
also an additional transit duty of 7 dollars 2 mace, or £2. 1 Os. 
upon each bale. 

Now that our silk imports are thought likely to range 
between 100,000 and 150,000 bales per annum, this also is 
a subject not Avithout interest to us at home. I must. 



CHINESE TRANSIT EXACTIONS. 273 

liOAvever, in fairness remark that tlie competition of the silk 
of other countries renders it less probable that these silk 
exactions all fall upon the exporter. 

Be it remembered, then, that since the outbreak of the 
rebellion in China, the Chinese mandarins have levied a tax 
of full £2,000,000 a year upon the people of England ; that 
this tax consists almost entirely of local unauthorized extor- 
tion, and that it is capable of indefinite increase. 

The English people should teach a starling to cry, " Free 
transit through China," and should hang the bird up in 
Lord Elgin's cabin. Nothing short of this will do, — nothing 
short of this will prevent future wars. What more is 
required I do not now discuss ; but this is the first and 
most indispensable of all conditions of peace. We do not 
know enough of the country to take any substitute or to 
submit to any modification. 

Whenever %ve strive to obtain sufficient specific facts 
whereby to map a line of action, we are brought up b}^ the 
humiliating conviction that our ignorance of China is a 
darkness that may be felt. Even of that great conglomerate 
of cities on the Yangtse we know little more than that it is 
the commercial emporium of central China, and that its popu- 
lation is variously estimated at from five to eight millions 
of souls. We know that it exists, and that is nearly all we 
know. No one has been there except native Chinamen and 
Jesuit missionaries. There are some scattered notices of it 
in the Annales de la Proimgation ch la Foi (torn, xvii.), and 
Hue has made mention of it in his journey from Tartary to 
Canton. The elder missionary was roused to enthusiasm 
by the immensity of the numbers of prospective converts. 
For five leagues he saw nothing along the shores but the 
closely-packed habitations of men. For a still longer space 
the river, more than a league in breadth, was crowded with 
beautiful and fantastic vessels, passing and repassing by day 
and by night. Nearer to shore, where these vessels became 
fixed habitations, he entered at night a waterv/ay defined 
on each side by floating shops ; and for four hours he 
journeyed through a labyrinth of lit streets, all resting on 
the surface of the river. In the morning he reached the 
sliore, but only to find that Woochang differs from other 

T 



27 i CHINA. 

Chinese cities in nothing but its marvellous magnitude. From 
a distance lie saw pagodas and yamuns, and highly-cultivated 
environs. When he approached, he saw the usual details of 
an aggregate of Chinese habitations j banks worn away by 
inundations, workshops half-undermined by the stream, 
houses built upon piles ; no order, no breadth of thorough- 
fares, but narrow alleys, along which men and cattle and 
hogs pressed in scared or jostling crowds. He records his 
sensations of the suffocating odours from the open manure- 
buckets, just as I have experienced at Shanghai, Hangchau, 
Xeahing, Shauhing, or Ningpo. It seemed a whole creation 
of mankind, all buying and selling, and bartering and chaf- 
fering, a Babel of trade, a struggling world of dealers and 
brokers. 

This is the one great type of a thousand cities which 
differ only in dimensions. How can we tell from which it 
may be safe to be excluded, or how far a single exception 
may neutralize the benefit of all we gain, and enable the 
cunning savages to hold us in check and keep us in the 
wrong 1 

The capacity of China is as unmeasured as its internal 
geography is unknown. ISTo demand has yet been made 
upon it which has not been amply answered. Give us leave 
to go and talk to the people, and there is nothing we vv^ant 
which they cannot sell us. At Swatow you will be able to 
buy for a dollar and a half per picul sugar which now costs 
you at the Manillas 3 dollars ; at Form.osa you can obtain 
the same important commodity at the same price, and rice 
and indigo in any quantity. Coals can be loaded at that 
island for 3 dollars a ton, and the carrying trade is upon a 
scale which no one can appreciate who has not seen the 
enormous fleets of junks which now conduct it under the 
terrible risks of shipwreck and piracy. 

The facts I have above stated respecting the transit levies 
have not been gathered from books or extracted from 
returns — the figures are now for the first time put in 
writing. They have been caught from the lips of those who 
have suffered these exactions and paid these duties with 
constant but discontented habitude. I may be wrong in 
gome matter of place or district, for the obscure jargon in 



CHINESE TPvA2fSIT EXACTIONS. 27^ 

"whicli we talked made geograpliy difficult ; but a Cliiiiamaii 
Las capital English for figures and amounts of money- 
Al^out the sums of these transit duties I have no doubt, and 
the precise track or city wherein they are levied is of na 
importance. Let me add, that these men are so harassed 
'by demands of benevolence towards the expenses of the 
civil war, or by blackmail levied by the rebels, that the 
oldest merchants are " shutting their books," as they express 
it. They look upon the presence and influence of the 
English as the only hope which commerce has in China.. 
Many a tale could I tell upon this subject, but it is one 
dangerous to handle in much detail. The court of Pekin 
has sharp eyes and a long arm. 



CHAPTEE XXIY. 



OCCUPATIOX OF IlOls-AlN'. 



American Diplomacy — ^The Minnesota — Artillery Practice at Hong- 
kong — The Coolie Corps — Death of Colonel Lugard — Arrival of the 
Adelaide — General Order to the Fleet — Proclamation to the People 
of Canton — Early Intelligence of the Chinese — Amount of the 
Attacking Force — Delivery of Despatches — Occupation of Hoaan 
— Chinese Attack upon a Boat's Crew — Yeh's Answer. 

There has been solemn conference at Macao, and it was 
whispered that Count Putiatin was admitted to the 
councils of Lord Elgin and Baron Gros. A rumour soon 
spread that Mr. Peed had taken an independent line, and 
had met with a rebuff. Pie had, so went the story, sent a 
proposal to Yeh to treat with him inside the city, but Yeh 
replied that he should be happy to see him outside the city^ 
but could not think of admitting any barbarian within the 
walls of Canton. Mr. Peed then proceeded to Macao, but 
even rumour did not venture to affirm what he proposed to 
himself by this journey, or whether the rather contemptuous 
refusal he had just received had in any way modified his 
opinion as to entangling alliances. The Chinese have another 
version of this affair. They profess to liave seen a copy of 

T 2 



276 CHINA. 

tlie ansvv^er, and laiigli Yv^ien tliey speak of it. I Lave not 
been able to induce any of tliem to procure me a transcript, 
and cannot make much of tlieir description of it. If it 
sliould reach you by way of America, I tliink you will find 
that the Imperial Commissioner has replied to his Excel- 
lency Mr. Heed by what is vulgarly called a " sell," — a sort 
of Chinese version of " Don't you wish you may get it? "* 
Certain it is that Mr. Eeed is very irate with his celestial 
friends, and has rather abandoned his idea of beincj master 
of the position. Yeh seems resolved to show the world that 
he is determined to carry out the policy openly acknow- 
ledged in that notorious Chinese state paper, and to consider 
the terms of the last treaty binding only so long as he had 
not force enough to break them. He seems to be confident 
also that the present is a proper season for perseverance in 
this policy. He has doubtless heard of the might and 
■wonderful contrivances of the Minnesota. ISJ"othini>- that 

o 

can be said in praise of her discipline and arrangements, 
her exquisitely-finished machinery for economizing labour 
and time in the working of her guns, her Sharpe's rifles, her 
officers' cabins, and her state reception-rooms, can be too 
great praise; but Yeh has heard all about these. "VYe have 
just seized^ copies of a correspondence which has been pass- 
ing between a Chinese writer resident on this island and 
Howqua. It contains a minute chronicle of every event, 
and descrijotions of men and things, including a by no means 
flattering account of the personal appearance of Lord Elgin; 
possibly it also included a statement of the draught of water 
of the Minnesota. I recollect that once on circuit, w^hen a 
zealous and hot-tempered junior replied with a scarcely 
decent violence to an interruption of the judge, and drew 
down upon himself a rebuke, a sarcastic old stager v/ho sat 
by said, "Pitch into him again, give it him well; he can't 
come down to you." Yeh knows that the Minnesota cannot 
come up to him. Moreover, he has filled his city mth 
soldiers from the ISTorth. We have just kindly rescued and 
released 300 of these from the wrecked Waverley. The 
Chinese report that the walls are now bristling with cannon; 
that the streets are all undermined; and that Yeh is deter- 
* I am not aware that this letter has ever yet been made public. 



ARTILLERY PRACTICE AT HONGKONG. 277 

mined to blow the whole place into the air rather than give 
it up. We shall see shortly what truth there is in these 
tales. They by no means lessen the eagerness of our fellows 
to get into the city; but they may perhaps induce the 
admiral and general to explode these mines by a few shells 
before they set our British bulldogs at the walls. 

Meanv/hile the valleys and precipices of this mountain 
island ring and echo with preparations. The cpiet citizen 
cannot take his afternoon walk without his rumination upon 
the prices of grey shirting or his sigh over the depreciation 
of "Malwa" being interrupted by a sharp volley of musketry, 
or the ringing of a Minie bullet, or the whistling of a shell. 
The Chinese are certainly not a nervous race. On the 
parade-ground to the east of this wall-less and citadel-less 
city of Victoria, some 500 men of the 59th may be daily 
seen at their exercise. A cloud of Chinese children take 
advantage of the severity of discipline to hang upon their 
.skirts, stooping down and picking up the cartridge-papers 
from between the feet of the immovable redcoats, who dare 
not even raise a foot to tread upon the fingers that tickle 
their ankles. We are too poor in men to be able to spare 
any to keep the ground. IJp in the ravine behind Govern- 
ment-house a detachment is firing at a target at a range of 
1,000 yards. That target has its attendant company of 
more adult Flik-hees. They can scarcely be kept at a safe 
distance; and when the bugle sounds to cease firing, they 
rush in and dig out the wasted lead. Further off, on the 
side of the mountain, with little flagstaff's fixed on rocks at 
various ranges, a field battery is practising with shot and 
shell. Straight in the line of fire, the Chinese washermen 
are spreading their clothes to dry upon the brushwood, quite 
•unconcerned at the discharges, satisfied to confide in the 
skill of the artillerymen, and having a full practical know- 
ledge of the flight of shot. At the .short ranges the shells 
must pass a few feet over their heads. It cannot be that 
men who behave thus can be of a race of cowards. 

We have also had a sham fisrht on a fjrand scale. The 
racecourse and the surrounding hills, and the road leading 
thence to the city, were contested with steadfast valour ; 
but^ alas ! in this month of December the thermometer still 



278 CHINA. 

stands at 84° in tlie shade, and the men looked white and 
v%^orn before the work was done. 

As a balance to the contemptuous indifference with which 
we open all our preparations and all our intentions to the 
spies of the Canton authorities, w^e take care to use our own 
special sources of strength, discipline, and wealth. The 
•coolie corps are, like ever^'thing else in China, anomalies in 
warfare. They are natives of a country about to be 
invaded, under drill to carry the guns and provisions of the 
invaders. Each gun has eighteen coolies attached to it, and 
they are exercised to attend the process of unlimbering, and 
to take up the gun on their bamboo poles and trot off with 
it, at a pace which might be dangerous if their fidelity were 
in doubt, or if there were no Minie rifles in their rear. 
These fellows will do their work if tkey can be got on ship- 
board. They will not desert, for they are better paid by us, 
and would probably be beheaded by Yeh. They will scarcely 
be expected to take the guns up under lire from the enemy, 
so they v/ill have no violent incentive to run away. From 
the experience we have here of the Chinese character — if 
such a fagot of contradictions can be called character — I 
believe they will do what we have hired them to do, — act as 
artillery and commissariat mules over rough ground inter- 
vening between points of debarcation and points of action. 
It v/ill probably be arranged that their pay shall be a little 
in arrear, and they know that they will be shot down 
'"t^'ithout mercy if they attempt any tricks. 

A short time since, Mr. Caldwell, the " protector of 
•Chinese," whose practical knovvdedge of the Chinese popula- 
tion is greater, perhaps, than that of any European, was 
invited to inspect this body. They were paraded to the 
number of 800. In walking down the ranks he picked out 
eighteen men as Canton men, and three others as mandarin 
soldiers. He was right in every instance. The Canton 
men, when interrogated, at once admitted that they never 
had the least intention of trusting themselves in the neigh- 
bourhood of their own authorities, but proposed to take the 
English pay, and escape at the last moment. The mandarin " 
soldiers said they would serve, for the mandarins owed them 
-arrears, and the English paid regularly. The other men 



COLONEL LUGAFtD. 279 

coiYie from a distant mountain district, Lave no families 
within the power of the mandarins, are many of them im- 
plicated as rebels, and may, as Mr. Caldwell thinks, be 
moderately trusted to act as their interests may point. 

These traits of Chinese character are not unimportant. 
It is only little by little that we can come to get a notion of 
a people whose trains of thought and motives of action are 
so utterly different from our own. 

On the 1st, the death of Colonel Lugard, of the engineers, 
was announced, and on the 3rd he was buried with all mili- 
tary honours, in the cemetery hard by the racecourse. It 
was an imposing spectacle, for all the officers of all the 
European nations now present in Hongkong followed in 
long procession the gun-carriage on which he was borne to 
his grave. Many of those present not only knew him as an. 
officer, whose loss at this critical moment is disastrous to 
the public service, but also loved the man. I was one of 
those who mourned to think we shall hear no more his 
frank hearty laugh, and receive no more his manly, soldier- 
like greeting. Poor Lugard was a victim to hard labour in 
this treacherous climate. He had much to do, and small 
materials to work with. He was a leader without soldiers. 
He had to form and fashion a corps of engineers and sappers 
and miners out of troops of the line. His labour was inces- 
sant, and he paid the penalty which these trying Hongkong 
heats almost always exact for over-exertion. 

The long-expected Adelaide made her appearance on the 
1st, having on board twenty officers and 507 rank and file. 
On the 4th, the Assistance came in from Calcutta, bringing 
us back the 300 marines left behind by Lord Elgin, and 
100 of the 59th. The letters by her were very unsatisfac- 
tory in their tone, and gave no promise of more troops from 
India. 

We are now able to calculate the force upon v/hicli we 
must de|)end to take and hold this city, with its million of 
inhabitants. 

The first act in the way of a move was tlie issuing of the 
following general order to the fleet : — 



280 CHINA. 

"GENERAL OEDER. 

*' The period being novr at hand for commencing active operations 
against the city of Canton, the Commander-in-Chief has to call the 
serious attention of the captains, officers, seamen, and marines of the 
squadron to the necessity of carefully protecting the lives and property 
of the peaceable and unarmed inhabitants, not only on the ground, of 
humanity, but likewise on that of policy, which renders it so important 
to retain the goodwill of those classes of the Chinese population, whose 
material interest and predilections separate them from the high 
mandarins and the military powers of Canton, against whom alone 
hostile actions will be directed. 

" The Rear- Admiral has also to impress upon the officers and men who 
may so soon be actively employed, his determination to discountenance 
and prevent all looting or plundering, both as demoralizing and as 
subversive of the discipline that is so essentially necessary to success. 
He trusts that the officers, by precept, and especially by their example, 
■will carry out his vicAvs and instructions. 

**The Commander-in-Chief takes this opportunity of expressing his 
warmest thanks to the commodore, captains, commanding officers, 
seamen, and royal marines of the squadron, for the patient endurance 
i.hey have evinced during the last twelve months, in the monotonous- 
and frequently harassing duty of keeping open the navigation of the 
river; and he further assures them that, whatever may be the nature 
of expected operations, he shall enter upon them with the strongest 
confidence in their ready and gallant co-operation for the maintenance 
of the honour of the British flag and the success of our arms. 

"M. Seymoue, 
" Rear- Admiral, Commander-in-Chief." 

The next act was a declaration from tlie French admiral, 
declaring on the part of .France a blockade of the Canton 
river. 

On the 11th it became known that the Chinese writer^ 
Achnng, who had been taken into custody for maintaining a 
correspondence with Howqiia, had been sent into the city 
with letters from the English and French plenipotentiaries, 
announcing their arrival, and giving note of their cre- 
dentials. 

On the 12th Mr. Wade, the chief of Lord Elgin's inter- 
preting staff, proceeded to the city under a flag of truce, 
and delivered the demands of the English and French pleni- 
T)otentiaries upon the Imperial Commissioner holding the 
city of Canton. 

A proclamation in the Chinese language was at the same 
time circulated in the suburbs of the city. It stated that 



WARNING TO THE CANTONESE. 281 

certain demands had been made upon the Imperial Com- 
missioner, and that ten days had been given him v/ithin 
which to accede to them ; that in the meanwhile (on the 
following Monday) the allied forces would occupy the island 
of Honan, opposite to the city, doing no damage unless 
resistance should be made ; that at the expiration of the 
ten days allowed to the Commissioner, an attack would be 
made upon the city, unless the terms demanded were yielded, 
and warning all non-belligerents to take such measures for 
tlie removal of their families and property as they might 
think expedient. 

It is a curious fact, illustrative of the rapidity with which 
the Chinese obtain intelligence, that on the Friday morning, 
while all the English in Hongkong were in ignorance of 
any communication being about to be made up the river, I 
heard the Chinese picture-dealer, to whose shop, as a focus 
of Chinese news, I have already alluded in these letters, 
offering to bet a picture against fifty dollars that the English 
would not be in • Canton within ten days. He would not 
bet about twelve days. He must have got an early copy of 
the proclamation, which was, I believe, printed on board- 
ship up the river, and could not, even at that distance of 
fifty miles, have been in the hands of any Chinaman more 
than a very few hours. 

I post this letter on Sunday, although the mail does not 
leave until Monday ; for as Honan is to be occupied on 
Monday, and as I am going to witness the operations, I 
may not be able to write again by the outgoing mail. If 
possible, however, I shall send you a second letter. 

"VVe must hope, in the interest of humanity, that when 
the allotted interval has expired Yeli will yield. He must 
know that he has at his gates the representatives of the 
four great nations of the earth ; and that, hov/ever they 
may differ upon the modus operandi, they are all equally 
determined to tolerate no longer this foolish Chinese pageant, 
Mr, Eeed does not, I apprehend, propose to himself to go 
home without making a treaty, any more than does Count 
Putiatin, or Baron Le Gros, or the Earl of Elgin. However 
much we may deplore the undignified policy which the 
American statesmen at home have chosen to adopt, and 



282 CHINA. 

liov^ever mucli we may feel satisfied to find that tliey are 
balked of even the advantage tliey propose to themselves 
of monopolizing tlie trade v/liile we were fighting the 
common battle, still our interests are identical, and eventu- 
ally we must work together. The high mandarins of China 
cannot but know the power of the nations arrayed against 
them. But if they do not, if they are ignorant of what 
every Cliinaman at SingajDore knows full well, and of what 
each small tradesman at Hongkong could tell them, what a 
practical satire this ignorance is upon that sj'-stem of com- 
petitive examinations and the rule of literary men, which, 
as it is worked in China, has been so little understood and 
so senselessly extolled ! It is useless, however, to speculate 
upon what Yeh will do, for the next mail will bring you 
tidings of what he has done, and what we have done. 

llean while we must have troops. It v/ill not do to " give 
Tip China altogether." The hot months will soon be round 
^gain, and we must expect that of our handful of land force 
many must be invalided. If disease should unhappily so 
reduce our scanty and insufiicient garrison as to compel us 
to retire from the city, after having once taken possession, 
the consequences would be most disastrous. Alreadj^ have 
placards been Y>osted at Amo}- threatening a massacre of the 
English there. It is a vain threat while the might of 
England is felt in the South, but it would easily become a 
dire reality. The English families are mixed up in the 
crov/ded Chinese town. They are without any means of 
mutual protection, and the presence of a single ship of war 
is rather a terror to the Chinese than a protection to the 
Sritish. At Swatow, v/here many English now reside, there is, 
and can be while the present treaty holds, no protection what- 
ever. At Foo-chow there is a flourishing English settleaient, 
but the ships of war cannot get within ten miles of the place. 
What might be sufiered at Ningpo the Portuguese have 
already proved. Shanghai has the guns of the Fiqice, and 
Sir Frederick Nicholson might land his men and do some- 
thing to protect the settlement, for it has already shown 
itself defensible. But it is our moral prestige wliicli protects 
ns in the North, and this would be utterly ruined by any 
weakness or short-coming at Canton. Better be wise in 



THE ATTACKING FORCE. 283 

time, and send on a, reasonable number of troops at once, 
than liave to exact more terrible vengeance for more mas- 
sacres. 

The attacking force, exclusive of the ships, a list whereof 
I gave you by the last mail, will be as follows : — 

Troops from the gai-rison of Hongkong, including the 59fch 
I'sgiment, the artillery, the engineers, and a portion of the 

Madras troops .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 800 

Marines 2,500 

Naval Brigade .. .. .. .. .. •• .. 1,500 

French troops and sailors . . .. ,. . .... 900 

5,700 
Coolies : — 

Chinese C71 

Attached to medical staff . . . . . . . . . . 85 

Commissariat.. .. .. .. .. .. .. 48 

Malays 183 

Total .. 6,697 

Canto:^ E.IVEE, Dec. 15. 

As I had reason to suppose that the occupation of Honan 
would take place on Tuesday, and that the mail would be 
detained to allow the news of this fact to reach England, I 
came up the river on Sunday, and found the English 
admiral's flag still flying at the anchorage between the Bogue 
Forts and Tiger Island. 

The French fleet had just moved up. The two navies 
had been indulGfins: in mutual civilities on the occasion of 
the French declaration of blockade. The English admiral 
hoisted the French flag at the main and issued a congratula- 
tory general order. The French returned the compliment, 
and issued an order \2vy fervent in its terms. Moreover, 
the French entertained the English fleet with theatricals, 
and supper after the plaj'", and they have left Jack in high 
good humour with his lively allies. 

Mr. Wade and M. Marques had returned from their 
mission. Yeh despatched a mandarin of the fifth rank — 
*• All same, captain," as the pilot remarked, — to receive the 
two epistles. His scribes are probably now looking up 
Mencius and Choo-tze for a stock of moral sentiments to be 
worked into the reply. 



284 CHINA. 

If tlie reader has any curiosity as to this piece of Chiness 
ceremonial, it was after this fashion : — The Chinaman, 
Achono- had been sent with a letter from Sir John Bowrino:, 
and another from M. Bourbelonne, notifying the arrival of 
the English and French plenipotentiaries, and stating that 
on Saturday, at noon, a communication from these high 
officers would be sent to the Imperial Commissioner. 

At ten o'clock on the day appointed, a Hong boat, con- 
taining a Avell-known official — rather a low fellow, and 
decided in his opinions as to outside barbarians — took its 
station in the river. At noon the English gunboat, accom- 
panied by the Dragonne French gunboat, appeared at the 
western point of Honan island, and, choosing its anchorage, 
signalled to the mandarin's boat to approach. The inter- 
preter, accompanied by M. Duchesne cle Belcour, Captain 
Bate, and some few other spectators, went on board the 
Chinese boat, and was received by the mandarin with that 
tone of rollicking, swaggering civility which is thought by 
the Chinese to be good manners towards barbarians, but 
bad manners towards each other. He called for tea, and 
after this had been duly taken, delivered Yeh's answer to 
Sir J. Bo wring and M. de Bourbelonne's notes. Then he 
received the despatches from the plenipotentiaries of the 
allied powers, and with bows and " chin-chins " the parties 
separated. I understand that Yeh's answer is couched in 
terms of scant courtesy ; that it recognizes the plenipo- 
tentiaries not as ambassadors to the emperor, but as am- 
bassadors to Canton, and that it merely says he shall 
receive any commimications they may have to make to him. 

General Yon Straubenzee, attended by Major Clifford, 
joined the fleet on Sunday. 

This morning at half-past nine the admiral, accompanied 
by the general, left the Calcutta for the Coromandel. They 
go up together to the French admiral, and will direct the 
debarcation of a marine force of about 1,000 men on Honan 
Island. 

I have frequently explained — but some do not read and 
some do not remember, so I may as well repeat — that the 
Canton river is a very enormous volume of water, seeking 
the sea by various channels. In front of Canton there are 



OCCUPATION" OF HONAN. 285 

t>;^'-o of these channels of special importance, and between 
these two, and formed by them, is the large island of Honan, 
more than a mile and a half wide and four or five miles 
long. On the channel opposite to the back of the island 
stands the Macao Fort, now in our possession, and garrisoned. 
The island, therefore, lies between Macao Fort and the city 
of Canton. 

The Iraioeratrix and the hivperador have already gone up 
with the marines, and behind the Coromandel is the curious 
sight of a long train of Chinese bum-boats, freighted not 
only %vith ordinary stores, but carrying thirty head of live 
cattle. The Chinese purveyors modestly desired that a gun- 
boat should be ordered to tow them up, and although the 
request excited some merriment among the blue-jackets, 
these bum -boatmen are much too important to be left behind. 
So the Plover is tugging them up the stream. That stiff 
little Plover, the last time I saw her she was sharing the 
shot with the Hongkong high up Fatshan Creek j now she 
is dragging up a ragged crew of China boats. Let us 
move up the river after the admiral and the general. It is 
fortunate for General Straubenzee that he is not only a 
good soldier, but also that he is a man of popular and 
winning manners. The fleet, who all have a sort of 
Chinese filial affection for Sir Michael Seymour, v/ere 
rather inclined to look with evil eye upon any one who 
came to share his laurels. They began rather early to 
find fault with the general's name ; but now he has been 
among them a little, the general opinion is, as I heard it 
expressed, " It's impossible to help liking that old Straw- 
berry-jam after all." Moreover, they see Sir Michael and 
the aforesaid Strawberry-jam consorting together with in- 
timate cordiality, and everything in this very important 
matter moves easily and well. 

Dec. 16. 

This morning the occupation of ITonan took place. The 
sight from Macao Fort was interesting only for a few 
minutes. One battalion of our marines and 150 French 
sailors disembarked, under the guns of the shipping, upon 
the back of the island, and out of sight of Canton. As they 
advanced into the island, we watched the lines of red and 



283 CHINA. 

blue, not quite expecting, but feeling the possibility that 
some puff of smoke might give signal for a fight. The 
Chinese, however, had wisely seen that this plain and open 
island was not defensible. If there ever had been any 
soldiers there, which is very improbable, they had been 
withdrawn when we issued our proclamation to the inha- 
bitants that we intended to take peaceable possession. 
Some tents were now pitched, the outposts formed, the 
French and English positions demarcated, and our material 
guarantee was seized. 

Another affair has happened, which terminated in a very 
different manner. Intelligence travels slowly from ship ta 
ship in our widely separated force ; but I believe the circum- 
stances are these : — On the afternoon of Monday, Lieutenant 
Pym, of Arctic celebrity, who now commands the Bantere/r^ 
landed for exercise in the neighbourhood of a mandarin 
village some way down the river. He v/as accompanied by 
Mr. Wurgman, the artist, who is here sketching for the 
" Illustrated News," Allured by the friendly appearance 
of the inhabitants, they entered the village, and they appear 
also to have entered the house of the mandarin there. 
"Whether Lieutenant Pym was acting prudently or properly 
in doing this I am not able to state ; my information is too 
indistinct to allow me to offer even a suggestion upon this 
point. " All that is certain is, that as the party returned to 
the boat the population of the village suddenly encompassed 
them and poured in a volley from gingals and other firearms. 
Eive men were killed : Lieutenant Pym was shot through, 
botli legs. The interpreter then jumped overboard, and 
was follow^ed by several of the men, who retreated across 
the paddy-fields. They were followed by the Chinese mul- 
titude, and six wounded. All this took place within sight 
of the JSfanlcin, whence assistance was, of course, despatched 
at the first sound of firearms. The Nankin men arrived 
just in time to rescue Lieutenant Pym, who was keeping 
the Chinese at bay with his sword and revolver. Of the 

* An inquiry took place, which termiaated in the court finding that 
Lieut, Pym was fully justified in all that he had done, and compliment- 
ing him upon the great gallantry he displayed throughout this critical 
affair. 



yeh's ajs^swes. 287 

whole party, every one was either killed or woimdecl, except 
Mr. Wurgman and two seamen. This seems to have been 
a most treacherous and unprovoked assault, and an attack 
upon the village was subsequently made by the Nmikin. 
The first attempt was, I believe, not very successful, but it 
will doubtless be renewed. 

Tuesday Night. 

It is most provoking that the most important events will 
happen within half an hour of the departure of the mail. 
This afternoon a messenger from Yeh arrived at Macao Fort 
with a despatch for the plenipotentiaries. You know how, 
hoping against hope, I have kept up some intelligence inside 
the city. Hitherto it has stood me in little stead, but at a 
critical moment it has turned up trumps. I am informed, 
then, that the Chinese merchants say that Lord Elgin's 
demand was of the most temperate character ; that he asked 
for no more than that the treaty should be carried out, that 
Cc\nton should be put upon the same footing as the other 
treaty ports, its gates opened to commerce, compensation 
given for damage done to British merchants, and our occu- 
pation of Honan acquiesced in as a material guarantee until 
all matters are settled. At least one of the Chinese mer- 
chants thinks that these demands should have been jumped 
at. Yeh, however, thinks otherwise. The answer just gone 
up to Lord Elgin is, if my information is correct, much like 
that returned to the American.'''" It tells his lordship that 
the question of the treatment of strangers at Canton has 
been settled by the decree of the emperor ; that Sir George 
Bonham was made a baronet for respecting that decree, and 
he recommends Lord Elgin to follow his example ; that, as 
to compensation, Yeh has a demand upon the English 
Government for losses suffered by the Chinese. 

You must make some allowance for a version of a Chinese 
document read to me in Canton English ; but I think I 
can pledge myself that this will be found to be the substance 
of this document. 

Lord Elgin is no true son of Eobert the Bruce if he stands 
this style of ansvrer ; so we may soon now expect something 
decisive here. 

* See this letter ante., p. 263. 



2-88 CHINA. 

Daring my stay in the Canton river I found great incon- 
Tenience in having no accurate knowledge of the circum- 
stances of the former bombardment. As we are now about 
to enter upon a relation of the operations before this famous 
city, I had thought that a resume of the previous proceedings 
Yv^ould be necessary to prepare the reader to understand the 
■whole matter ; but upon referring to the state papers, it 
seemed that the shortest and most satisfactory course would 
be to reprint Sir Michael Seymour's despatch. 



From the London Gazette of Tuesday, Jan. 6, 1857. 

Admiralty, Jan. 5. 

The following despatches have been received from Rear-Adrniral 
Sir Michael Seymour, K.C.B., Commander-in-Chief of her Majesty's 
ships and vessels on the East-India and China station : — 

"OPERATIONS AT CANTON. 

" Niger, at Canton, Nov. 14, 1856. 

" SiK, — In the sixth paragraph of my general letter. No. 91, of the 
15th ult., I alluded to the Chinese authorities having a few days pre- 
viously forcibly seized the native crew of a lorcha under English colours, 
and that I had demanded redress. 

" 2. I have now the honour to report, for the information of the 
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that on the 8th of October the 
lorcha Arroio, with a colonial register from the governor of Hongkong, 
•was boarded while at anchor at Canton by a Chinese officer and a party 
of soldiers, who, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the master, an 
Englishman, seized twelve of her crew, boimd and carried them away, 
and hauled down the British flag. Her Majesty's consul afterwards 
remonstrated with the officer who had seized the men, but without 
effect. 

" 3. This outrage was immediately brought to the notice of the 
Imperial High Commissioner by Mr. Parkes, her Majesty's consul, who 
required the twelve men to be returned to the Arroio by the same 
officer who had carried them away ; that an apology should be made, 
a.nd an assurance given that the British flag should in future be 
respected. Their lordships will, however, observe, on perusing the 
documents which accompany this despatch, that although the twelve 
men were eventually sent back, it was not in the public manner in 
which they had been carried away, and all appearance of an apology 
was pointedly avoided. 

** 4. On the 11th of October this unpleasant occurrence was officially 
reported to me by Sir John Bo wring, her Majesty's plenipotentiary in 



FIRST BOMBARDMENT OF YEH's YAMUN. 289 

China, and his Excellency suggested that the seizure of an imperial 
junk would probably produce the desired reparation. I accordingly 
directed Commodore the Hon. C. G. J. B. Elliot, of her Majesty's ship 
Syhille, senior officer in the Canton river, to carry out Sir John Bow- 
ring's suggestion, and I despatched the Barracouta, steam sloop, and 
Coromandel, tender, to ajfford him the means of doing so. A junk was 
seized,* but it led to nothing. I then sent her Majesty's steam frigates 
Encounter and Sampson to join the commodore (the former to lie off the 
factory), in the hope that the presence of such an imposing force 
would show the High Commissioner the prudence of complying with 
our demands, but his Excellency appeared determined on resistance. 

"5. At this period Mr. Parkes proceeded to Hongkong, to consult 
with Sir John Bovvring and myself as to the best measures of compul- 
sion to be adopted, andv.'C all considered that the seizure of the defences 
of the city of Canton would be the most judicious, both as a display of 
power without the sacrifice of life and of our determination to enforce 
redress —experience of the Chinese character having proved that 
moderation is considered by the officials only as an evidence of weak- 
ness. 

" 6. I immediately moved the Calcutta above the Bogue forts, as 
high up as her draught of water permitted, and on the morning of the 
23rd October, proceeded on board the Coromandel steam-tender for 
Canton, with the Sampson and Barracouta in company, and the detach- 
ments of royal marines and boats' crews of her Majesty's ships Calcutta, 
Winchester, and Bittern, and the boats of the Syhille, with the commo- 
dore. On approaching the Blenheim Heach I diverted the Sampson 
and a portion of our force up the Macao passage, to prevent the Chinese 
from stopping up the channel, and to capture the Blenheim Fort. I 
then went on with the Coromandel and Barracouta to the four barrier 
forts, about five miles below the city. Anchoring the two steamers 
above the forts, I despatched the boats and took possession of them. 
An ill-judged attempt at resistance from two of the forts, which fired 
on our ships and boats, resulted in the death of five Chinese soldiers. 
There were about 150 guns, from one foot bore to four-pounders. 

" 7. I now directed Commander Fortescue, in the Barracouta, to 
follow the Sampson, and having spiked the guns, destroyed the car- 
riages and ammunition, and burnt the buildings in the forts, I pro- 
ceeded to Canton, where I arrived at 2 P.M., and learned that the boats 
from the Sampson and Barracouta had taken quiet possession of the 
Blenheim Fort, and also of Macao Fort, a very strong position on an 
island in the middle of the river, mounting eighty-six guns, which I 
have garrisoned, and shall retain for the present. 

"8. Her Majesty's consul, by my direction, immediately informed 
the High Commissioner of my arrival, and of the aggressive measures 
which he had compelled me to take in consequence of his refusal to 
redress the wrong committed by his officers ; also that I should con- 

"* This vessel was afterwards proved to be private property, and 
was therefore released. 



290 CHINA. 

tiniie such proceedings until reparation should be made. His Excel- 
lency's reply was very unsatisfactory. 

" 9. Ou the morning- of the 2'ith, I landed a portion of the marines 
to aid the detaclunents from the Sybille and Encounter, already at 
Canton, in the protection of the factory, and proceeded in the Coro- 
mandel to join the Barracouta, off Macao Fort. Then, at a precon- 
certed signal, the Bird's Nest Fort, mounting thirty-five guns, and a 
small fort opposite the city, which might have annoyed the factory, 
were taken without opposition, as were subsequently the Shamin 
Forts, at the head of the Macao Passage. The whole of the guns 
were rendered unserviceable, and the ammunition destroyed. 

"10. As the state of affairs "now appeared so very unpromising, I 
considered it advisable to take effectual measures for the protection of 
the factory. The remainder of the royal marines and a body of small- 
arai men were, therefore, landed ; advanced posts and field-pieces were 
stationed at all the assailable points, barricades thrown across the 
streets, ai-.d tlie boats kept vigilant watch to guard against the approach 
of fire-rafus and attacks by water. The execution of this important 
duty I intrusted to Captain W. K. Hall, C.B., my flag-captain, whose 
zeal and activity throughout the whole of the operations I cannot too 
highly commend. The royal marines were in charge of Captain P. C. 
Penrose, E.M., of her Majesty's ship, Winchester, who showed great 
abiUty and promptitude. 

" Captain Cowper, royal engineers, who had been sent from Hong- 
kong to afford me the benefit of his professional experience, was of 
great assistance in pointing out and remedying the weak points in our 
position. 

"A body of American officers, seamen, and marines, under Com- 
mander Foote, of the United States' corvette, Portsraouth, provided for 
the interests of the American community. 

" 11. On the 25th I took possession of the Dutch. Folly, a fort with 
fifty guns, on a small island opposite the city, whei'e I afterwards placed 
a body of 140 officers and men, under Commander KoUand, of the 
Calcutta. All defence of the city being now in our hands, I considered 
the High Commissioner would see the necessity of submission, and I 
directed Mr. Parkes to write and state that when his Excellency should 
be prepai'ed to arrange the points in dispute in a satisfactory manner, I 
would desist from further operations ; but the reply did not answer my 
expectations. 

"An attack was made at 12.30 P.M. by a body of troops, supported 
by a much larger force, which occupied the streets in the rear. Mr. 
Consul Parkes was on the spot at the time, and warned them to retire, 
but ineffectually. The guard of royal marines, in charge of Captain 
Penrose, then drove them back, with a loss, as we understand, of fourteen 
killed and wounded. 

" 12. The 26th, being Sunday, was observed as a day of rest. 

" 13. Early on the morning of the 27th I caused another letter to be 
written to the High Commissioner, to the effect that as satisfaction had 
not been offered for the affair of the Arrow, I should resume offensive 
operations; and his Excellency having, by his illegal measures and 



291 

determination to refuse reparation, produced this display of force, I 
concurred in opinion with Sir John Bowring that this was a fitting 
opportunity for requiring the fulfihnent of long-evaded treaty obliga- 
tions ; and I therefore, in addition to the original demands, instructed 
Mr. Parkes to make the following communication : — 

"'That, to prevent the recurrence of evils like the present, which 
have been occasioned by the disregard paid by the Imperial Com- 
missioner to the repeated applications for redress and satisfaction made 
to him by letter in the matter of the Arrow by her Majesty's plenipo- 
tentiary and the consul — writing, in consequence of the closing of the 
city to foreigners, being the only means of communication — I demanded 
for all foreign representatives the same free access to the authorities 
and city of Canton (where all the Chinese high officials reside) as 
is enjoyed under treaty at the other four ports, and denied to us at 
Canton alone.' 

"No reply having been made, I determined to open fire on the 
High Commissioner's compound (the Yamun) a large space of ground 
within the old city, surrounded by a high wall, which contains his 
Excellency's residence, and is consequently Government property. 
Accordingly, at 1 P.M., the first shot was fired from the 10-inch 
pivot gun of the Encounter, and, at intervals of fn m five to ten 
minutes, the fire was kept up from that gun till sunset. The Barra- 
couta at the same time shelled the troops on the hills behind Gough's 
Tort, in the rear of the city, from a position she had taken up at the 
head of Sulphur Creek. 

" A proclamation was this day issued, under the High Commissioner's 
own seal, and placarded publicly, offering a reward of thirty dollars for 
the head of every Englishman. One of the originals is in possession 
of her Majesty's consul. Nearly all the Chinese servants now quitted 
the factory. 

"A detachment of eigliteen gunners of royal artillery, under Capt. 
Guy Rotton, joined me. I stationed them at first in the Dutch Folly, 
where they performed good service. 

" 14. No change having taken place in the aspect of affairs from the 
proceedingsof the 27th, Iresumed operationson the following dayfrom the 
Dutch Folly, where I placed in position two oii\iQ Encounter s 32-pounder 
guns. I had previously given the fullest warning to the inhabitants 
in the vicinity to remove their persons and property (Capt. Hall having 
landed twice for that purpose), in which occupation they were engaged 
during the whole of the night. I began firing shortly after noon, my 
object being to open a clear passage to the wall of the city. This was 
materially furthered by a conflagration of a large portion of the houses 
in our line of attack, which opened the wall to our view. I ceased firing 
at sunset. 

" Captain the Hon. Keith Stewart, of her Majesty's ship NanTcin, 
joined me on the morning of the 28th, with 140 of his crew and two 
field-pieces. Sixty-five of the crew of the United States' corvette 
Levant also arrived, to protect American interests, making their total 
force 140 officers and men, under Commanders Foote and Smith. 

" 15. Our firing reopened earlier on the morning of the 29th than 
U 2 



292 CHINA. 

was intended, owing to an appearance as if guns had been mounted on 
the city wall during the night. At 11 a.m. Commander AY. T. Bate 
and Mr. C. G. Johnson, acting master, late of the Bittern, having ascer- 
tained, by personal examination and at considerable risk, the practica- 
bility of the breach, the force particularized in the enclosed return was 
told off for the assault, under the command of Commodore the Hon. 
C. Elliot. 

** The landing was effected at 2 P.M., and the men, having formed, 
were at once led to the attack (accompanied by two field-pieces in 
charge of Lieutenants Bushnell and Twysden), the seamen by the 
commodore, Captain the Hon. Keith Stewart, and Commanders Bate 
and Rolland ; the Eoyal Marines by Captains P. C. Penrose and E,. 
Boyle. The way was most gallantly shown by Commander Bate, 
whom I observed alone, waving an ensign on the top of the breach. 
The parapet of the wall was immediately afterwards covered with the 
marines and seamen, who, diverging to the left and right, had within 
ten minutes complete possession of the defences between two of tlie 
gates, with the field-pieces in the breach. 

" Captain Penrose, on gaining the wall, hastened to the gate on the 
right, on which he hoisted a small flag, to show its position to Captain 
Hall, who then promptly landed with the boats' crews of the Calcutta 
and Barracouta, and, having pushed his way through the streets to the 
city gate, quickly effected an entrance, with the assistance of Com- 
mander Fortescue, Lieut. G. C. Fowler, my flag-lieutenant, Captain 
Hotton, Eoyal Artillery, and four gunners of that corps. 

"The gate was then blown to pieces, and the archway partially de- 
stroyed, by two large charges of gunpowder. 

" Little opposition was offered by the Chinese troops (though the 
guns were loaded on the parapet) beyond keeping up a scattered and 
desultory fire from the streets and houses, by which we sustained a loss 
of three private marines killed and 11 men wounded. Tlie wounded 
were conveyed to the Dutch Folly, where they received every atten- 
tion from Dr. C. A. Anderson, staff-surgeon of the flag-ship, and 
Assistant-surgeon Newton, of the Bittern. 

"I had the satisfaction of entering the city through the gate soon 
after its passage had been secured ; and, accompanied by the commo- 
dore, her Majesty's consul, and a portion of the force, I visited and 
inspected the house and premises of the High Commissioner. We re- 
embarked at sunset, and the officers and men were returned to their 
respective quarters; my object^ which was to show his Excellency that 
I had the power to enter the city, having been fully accomplished. 

"Before the landing took place I assembled the officers, and urgentK'- 
impressed upon them (as I had previously done by written order) the 
necessity of restraining the men from molesting the per.;ons and pro- 
perty of the inhabitants, confining warlike operations against the troops 
only ; and I have pleasure in bearing testimony to the forbearance and 
good conduct of the seamen and marines. No straggling took place, 
and when the orders were given to re-embark, the men returned to 
their boats with regularity and despatch. 



FIRST BOilBAPvDMENT OF YEH's YAMUX. 293 

"About 5 P.iT. a second fire broke out ia the suburbs, bordering 
on the first one, which consuraed a large number of houses. 

'•' 16. At dayhght on the 30th it was discovered that the breach had 
been filled up during the night with sandbags and timber ; a few shots, 
however, soon cleared it again, as w^ell as on the mornings of the 31st 
and the 1st of Xovember, 

"17. I now judged it expedient personally to address the High 
Commissioner, in the hope of inducing him to accede to our demands. 
I pointed out that the steps which had been taken were occasioned by 
his refusal to afford reparation in the case of the Arroio ; that the citj 
of Canton was at my mercy ; and that it was in his power, by an im- 
mediate consultation with me, to terminate a state of affairs so likely 
to lead to the most serious calamities. His Excellency's reply consisted 
of a resume of his letters to Mr, Parkes ; he defended his conduct, and 
intimated that he had already appointed his deputy to consult with 
me. (This was an officer of very inferior rank to my own.) 

"I sent an immediate answer, and informed the High Commissioner 
that unless I received an explicit assurance of his assent to what I had 
proposed, I should at once resume operations. I added that the deli- 
beration wqth which I had so far proceeded should have convinced his 
Excellency of my reluctance to visit the consequences of his acts on the 
inhabitants of Canton ; but that should he persist in his present policy, 
he would be responsible for the result, and would learn, wdien too late, 
that we had the power to execute what we undertook. His Excellency 
rejoined, on the 3rd of November, and, after recapitulating his former 
correspondence, avoided touching on the subject of our demands. 

" IS. Fears being entertained that the Chinese would set fire to the 
houses round the factory to insure its destruction, a party was em- 
ployed for three days in pulling down such houses as were neces- 
sary to our safety, leaving an open space betvv&en the town and 
the factory. One of the rows of houses, called 'Hog Lane,' penetrated 
the whole length between two of the factories, and had long been a 
source of disquiet to the mercantile community. The officer com- 
manding the troops at Hongkong subsequently sent me a company of 
gun Lascars to clear away the debris. 

"Captain Thomas Wilson arrived on the 31st with ninety officers 
and seamen of her Majesty's ship Winchester. 

" 19. As the Chinese boats continued to furnish supplies to our ships 
during the operations, I considered it of great importance to inform 
the public of the nature of our grievances, the more particularly as 
various placards had been issued by the government with a view to 
excite enmity against us. I therefox-e had copies of my letters to the 
High Commissioner printed, and Captain Hall distributed them from 
his boat. They were eagerly sought for. Mr. Parker also promul- 
gated a. precis of the whole affair. 

"20. At eleven o'clock in the morning of the 3rd of November, I 
commenced a slow fii'e on the Government buildings in the Tartar city, 
and at Cough's Eort, from the Encounter, Sampson, and the Dutch 
Folly, and continued it till 5 P.M. At midnight an explosion took 
place in a small boat inserted under the platform of the club-house. 



294 CHINA. 

where the seamen and marines are lodged. It was evidently intended 
to blow np and set fire to the building. Fortunately, it did no damage 
beyond slightly burning one of the sentries. All the Ciiinese boats 
which had hei-etofore been allowed to remain unmolested round the 
factory sea-wall were now driven away. 

*'21. Being most anxious to avoid the necessity of further coercive 
measures, I again addressed the High Commissioner on the 3rd, but, as 
he could not be brought to entertain the justice of our demands, I was 
compelled to re-open fire on the 4th, and again on the 5th, from one of 
the Sampson's 68-pounder3, mounted in the Dutch Folly. It was prin- 
cipally directed at a fortification crowning a hill in the rear of the city, 
hitherto considered impregnable ; but, although an extreme range, 
several shells burst within the works, the effects of which must have 
undeceived the authorities as to their supposed security in that position. 

"22, On the 5th inst. I received information that an attack was in- 
tended to be made on our ships and the factory, and that twenty-three 
war-junks were at anchor below the Dutch Folly, protected hj the 
French Folly fort, mounting twenty-six heavy guns. Captain Hall 
having ascertained the correctness of the statement about the junks, I 
directed Commodore Elliot to take the Barracouta, Coromandel, and the 
ships' boats, and either disperse or capture them. The narrow channel 
having been buoyed by Commander Bate, at daylight of the 6th the 
Barracouta proceeded, followed by the Coromandel with a detachment 
of royal marines, and towing the ships' boats. Commander Fortescue 
anchored his ship about 800 yards above the French Folly, and within 
200 yards of the nearest junks, which were perfectly prepared for attack, 
and drawn up in line of battle. As the Chinese were observed training 
and pointing their guns, the Barracouta was obliged to open fire from 
her bow pivot-gun to check their deliberate arrangements, before her 
broadside could be brought to bear. A most animated fire was returned 
instantl}'' by the junks and forts from more than 150 guns, which was 
maintained with great spirit for at least thirty-five minutes ; but 
when the ship was sprung, her grape and canister, with the aid of the 
boats in charge of Captain Thomas Wilson, which, pulling in, opened 
a most effective fire, soon drove the people out of the junks. The 
Barracouta was then enabled to give her undivided attention to 
the fort, and, having silenced it, Captain Hall pulled in and took pos- 
session. The guns and ammunition were destroyed. Two 32-pounders 
in the Dutch Folly, whence I had the opportunity of witnessing the 
engagement, greatly assisted the Barracouta by the excellence of their 
fire. 

"Many of the junks being aground, and others sunk by onr shot, 
they v.rere all consequently burnt, except the admiral's ship, which 
was brought off. Only two escaped, and one of them w^as afterwards 
burnt by Captain Ha,il. 

" I was much pleased with the conduct of all the officers and men 
engaged on this service, especially of Commander Fortescue, his officers, 
and ship's company, under the heavy fire to which they were exposed. 
Comanander Fortescue mentions the gallant conduct of Lieut. W. K. 
.Bush, senior lieutenant of the Barracouta. The commodore has also 



SIR MICHAEL SEYMOUr's DESPATCH. 295 

brought to my notice tbe cool courage of Lieutenant II. H. Beamish, 
of my flagship, in carrying out an anchor during the heaviest of the 
fire, to enable the Barracouta to spring her broadside. 

'■■ I am happy to state that our loss only amounted to one seaman, of 
the CalcxUta, killed in Lieutenant Beamisli's boat, and four men 
wounded on board the Barracouta. 

"23. Her majesty's steam ship Niger arrived on the 7th from 
England ; and officers and seamen from the French frigate Virginie 
came up to the factory to protect French interests. 

" 24, At 4 A.M. on the 8th a bold attempt was made to destroy 
our ships with fire-rafts. Four were sent down by the tide ; one was 
anchored close ahead of the BarracovAa, and, but for the promptitude 
with which her cable v/as slipped, might have been productive of dis- 
astrous consequences. One raft burnt at her anchor, the others drifted 
clear to leeward. To prevent a similar occurrence, I caused a line of 
junks to be drawn across the river, both above and below the squadron. 
One of the junks in the upper boom was burnt by a stinkpot, thrown 
on board on the morning of the 12th, and two fire-boats exploded 
alongside the Niger at 9 a.m. on the 13th. This led to ail boats, 
with which the river is thronged, being ordered beyond the lines of 
junks, 

"25. Between the Sth and 12th of November the consul received 
three deputations from the principal merchants and gentry of Canton, 
who seemed anxious to bring about a settlement of the present disas- 
trous state of affairs. They were obliged to admit that our demands 
were not unreasonable ; but that such was the inflexibility of the High 
Commissioner's character, they feared it would be useless to attempt 
to alter his expressed determxination not to admit our representative 
into the city. They denied the accusation made by the High Commis- 
sioner, that he had been compelled by clamour to ofler a reward for our 
heads, and loud y expressed their disappi-obation at it. Even if they 
have the disposition to settle this dispute in our favour, I fear they 
lack the power to do so. 

" 26. Strenuous efforts having been made, without effect, to compel a 
compliance with our demands. Sir John Bowring, on the 8th, submitted 
that the next step should be the destruction of the Bogue Forts. Con- 
curring in this opinion, I informed the High Commissioner that unless 
he submitted within 24 hours I should resume hostile measures, I 
waited more than the stipulated time, and proceeded in the Encounter 
below the Bogue Forts on the afternoon of the 11th, leaving the 
•Sampson and Niger, with Commodore Elliot, to protect the factory. I 
found there the Calcutta (in which I re-hoisted my flag), Nankin, 
Barracouta, Hornet (just arrived from Shanghai), and Coromandel 
tender. 

" On the following morning I sent a summons to the chief mandarin 
to deliver up the forts till the Viceroy's conduct could be submitted to the 
Emperor of China, pledging myself that the forts should remain uninj ured 
and be given back when the present differences shall be terminated. 
This being refused, the squadron then attacked the two Wantung Island 
Ports from the Bremer Channel side, and they were taken possession of 



296 CHINA. 

by boats and royal marines after a considerable, tbougli ill-directed 
resistance, of about an bour. These forts were fully manned, bad 
upwards of 200 guns mounted, and were found stronger tban when 
captured in 1841. The Chinese troops stood to their guns up to the 
moment our men entered the embrasures. The mandarins had boats 
in readiness to facilitate their own escape, leaving their unfortunate 
followers, who rushed into the water until they were assured of their 
safety by the efforts made to save them. They were afterwards landed 
on the main. 

*' One boy killed and four men wounded, on board the Nankin, were, 
happily, the extent of our casualties, though stinkpots were freely thrown 
at those who first entered the forts. 

*•' On the 13th the Annunghoy Forts, on the opposite side of the Bogus 
entrance, mounting together 210 guns, were similarly attacked and 
taken, and, though some resistance was ofFei'ed, I am thankful to state 
without a casualty on our side. 

" 27. The command of the river being now in our hands, I have no 
operation in immediate contemplation beyond the security and main- 
tenance of our position ; and it will remain with her Majesty's govern- 
ment to determine whetlier the present opportunity shall be made 
available to enforce to their full extent the treaty stipulations which 
the Canton government has hitherto been allowed to evade with 
impunity. 

" 28. I have to express my entire approval of the conduct of the 
officers and men engaged in the series of laborious operations I have 
felt it my duty to undertake. From the commodore, captains, and 
commanders I have received the most pi'ompt and efficient assistance, 
and their example has influenced the officers and men. I have ah-eady 
mentioned the of&cers who have brought themselves prominently into 
notice. 

"The health of the men is remarkably good; and the squadron 
continues in an efficient state for any further service. 

" 29. During the whole of my ])roceedings I have received the most 
cordial support of the British and foreign communities, from their 
confidence that future benefit must be the result. Her Majesty's 
consul has rendered me the most valuable assistance, particularly 
from his intim.ate acquaintance with the Chinese language. 

*' My thanks are especially due to Commanders Foote and Smith, 
commanding the United States' naval forces, for the good order and 
harmony they have so largely contributed to preserve during the 
present crisis. 

"30. I have endeavoured, as briefly as its high importance will 
permit, to lay before their lordships every particular connected with 
my proceedings. The original cause of dispute, though comparatively 
trifling, has now, from the injurious policy pursued by the Imperial 
High Commissioner, assumed so very grave an aspect as to threaten 
the existence of amicable relations as regards Canton. 

'•'Though I shall continue to take steps, in conjunction with her 
Majesty's plenipotentiary, in the hope of being able to bring matters to 



^''> 



BOMBARDMENT OF CANTON. 297 

a successful termination, I shall be most anxious to receive the instruc- 
tions of her Majesty's government on tliis important question. 

"31. I enclose a copy of a notice I have had issued to the British 
coramunity by her Majesty's consul. 

" I have, &c. M. Seymour, 

" Rear- Admiral, Commander-in-Chief. 

" Ealph Osborne, Esq., M.P., Admiralty, 
London." 



CHAPTER XXY. 

THE BOMBAEDMENT OF CANTON. 

Advance to Canton River- — Flight of the River Population — The Sbii>s 
take up their positions — Honan — Quarters — Canton from the Honan 
Pack-houses — Arrival of the Troops — The Mosquitos and the 
" Browns " — Church Service in a Pack-house — A Peep from the 
main-truck of the Nimrod into Yeh's Yamun — A Reconnaissance to 
the Western Side of Canton — Another to the Eastern Side — Health 
of the Troops — Working at the Batteries — Proclamations — A Pla- 
carded Mandarin — Plan of Attack — Captain Edgell — The Morning 
of the Blockade — The First Shell — The Bombardment — Debarcatiou 
of the Troops — Capture of the East Fort — The Night Scene of the 
Bombardment — The Morning of the Assault — The Walls and Forts 
are taken. 

Canton Rivee, Dec. 19. 

It is yet uncertain wlietlier tlie siege of Canton will termi- 
nate in a surrender, an easy victory, or a sanguinary assault. 
But, Aviiatever tlie event, it must always be a curiosity in 
tlie history of sieges, so I shall chronicle our proceedings 
from day to day in some detail. 

It was on Saturday, the 19 th of December, that I had my 
first near view of Canton. In the dark and drizzling night 
of the previous day I had left our watch tower at Macao 
Fort and steered right up the reach towards that vast 
suburb and those ruined Shameen forts whereof we had 
taken so many four mile distant surveys from the top of the 
pagoda. We went on and on till the confused mass of 
lights separated into individual twinkles. We were so close 
that I could see a Chinese lantern through the sight of a 



NN\>>^^ OF THE 

,. ATTACK 8c BOMBARDMENT 

>n OF 

m/tjAe on- tfie grounel, by 
Tte Author. 



.VILLAGE 

My HOI SRYOFSP'.'. 

REFERENCE 

^^^ OiL^Graham. 50'!^^moyUrlHla, 
\^ ami/Sappers 

V HighlBir^f CAitiehMimlJSrigaH: 

^ Com'Hliot 

M&rwcAj'izUery. 




V<^ <!yv ^hiihmii vftiieBntish. 



Clii/iese, 
of the, AlUes'i 



V(t>/iS(m,,UtK'tjit 



298 CHINA. 

rifle when we dropped anclior and tlie sMp swung round to 
the tide. The splash of oars and the hail of the v/atch, and 
lights dotted here and there, told that other ships were 
around us j but nothing more of this mysterious enemy's 
country was visible through the murky night. We ^vrapped 
ourselves in our blankets, and fell asleep, wondering what the 
morning's light would show us. 

Day dawns — up sleepers, up ! or the buckets of the deck- 
washers will souse ye. We rub our eyes, and the first 
sensation is to expect to hear the swish of a shower of grape. 
We are in the middle of the hostile city. We are anchored, 
it is true, off the western point of Honan, just where the 
river breaks into two streams to form the island. We look 
down the channel which divides Honan from Canton. But 
Honan and Canton banks are almost equally covered with 
buildings; the channel is not really three hundred yards wide 
— it does not appear to be twenty feet. A thin, meandering 
line is all the water we can see ; the rest is covered by boats — 
not boats such as we see on the Isis, at the bottom of Christ 
Church meadows, nor even barges such as we see upon the 
Thames, but shapeless, house-like structures. Some are gay, 
flaunting flower-boats, bedizened with paint, and hung within 
with lanterns and lustres. Some are mandarin passage boats, 
with high poops and elaborate carvings. The great mass, 
however, consists of floating huts and houses some two 
stories high. The habitations of 100,000 people are crowded 
in this river, and give our position the appearance I have 
already described, as being in the very midst of the hostile 
«ity. 

Our little squadron steams and fumes (situated just as if 
we were a dozen vessels in Chelsea Keach, and the river 
towards London-bridge crowded as I have said), and the 
Cruiser, in obedience to a signal from the Coromandel, 
detaches herself, and proceeds into the little thread of 
channel. There is a hutter and a panic among the dwellers 
upon the water. The outside boats cast off", and the strong 
tide drifts them rapidly avv-ay before our steamer. How it 
happens that the channel is not hoj^elessly blocked, we 
cannot imagine. But the current is very swift ; down they 
go, and the channel is wider by their removal. Then another 



THE FLIGHT OF THE KIVER POPULATION. 299 

tier, and another, and another is detached, and the tide 
sweeps them still more rapidly av/ay. Surely all Canton is 
going to vanish down the river. Houses that looked firmly 
established on the land detach themselves slowly, and then 
scud off. Give them time — why should we hurry these poor 
people? An hour, and an hour, and the channel suburb 
of Canton has removed itself without molestation or injury. 
They are gone to seek a safer shelter in the numerous creeks 
which the Chinese only knov*^. Perhaps som.e of them are 
gone round to the back of the city. If so, I fear we shall 
have to disturb them once more j but there are thousands of 
backwaters and ditches and canals in which they can find 
safe habitation. 

And now the channel is clear. We have an uninterrupted 
view along it. It is not nearly so wide as the Thames at 
Wapping, and moreover tliere are no bridges to interrupt 
the line of sight ; • but the buildings on each side are much 
of the same character as those at Wapping and Rotherhithe 
— the warehouses of Houan on the right, the low buildings 
of Canton on the left. About half a mile up there is a wide 
interval, covered only with heaps of building rubbish, having 
no structure standing but a newly-built Chinese gateway — 
a sort of triumphal arch, whereon is writ in Chinese cha- 
racters, " The site of Hog Lane." Beyond this interval, as 
large or larger than the Temple-gardens — an interval which 
will be readily recognized as the location of the destroyed 
factories — there are ruins. High, square, brick-built pillars 
start up from the debris of their fallen roofs. These are the 
remains of the hongs and warehouses, battered or buried 
during the retaliatory attack of the British fleet. A little 
further on, where the stream slightly v/idens, there is an 
islet in mid-channel. It is covered with the wreck of 
masonry. Stones and brickwork are lying about in shapeless 
masses ; but nine trees, which have survived the deed of 
violence these ruins tell of, rise in the insterstices and shake 
their leaves and ofier shade. This islet shuts in the view 
and closes the vista. It is the site of the Dutch Folly 
Fort. 

The Cruiser has paused before the melting floating city. 
iTow it is gone, she passes on after it. We watch her with 



300 CHINA. 

intense anxiety. Will our friend Yeli suffer this ? Or shall we 
have the contents of those two lumdred guns which he is 
said to have brought to boar upon this channel down upon 
our decks 1 The excitement among the Chinese is not less 
than that among us. The roofs of the houses are crowded. 
They know that we are not going to fire, for our proclama-^ 
tious have told them that until the time given to Ye.h has 
expired w^e shall only fire in defence. But the steamer is 
Hearing the Dutch Folly, the scene of the last operations, and 
the Chinese spectators are as uncertain as we are whether 
Yell will allow the presence of a British man-of-war within 
three hundred yards of his own yamun. "Never do to-day 
what you can put off till to-morrow." Surely this maxim is 
to be found in Confucius, for in fighting or in 3delding it is 
a Chinaman's only rule of conduct. Yeh, although he has 
rejected Lord Elgin's demands, is determined to take his full 
pei'iod of respite. Not a soldier appears upon those small 
patches of the walls that are not hidden by the houses. 
Even the guns are, as our glasses show us, clumsily concealed 
by matting and wicker shields. The steamer passes through, 
and others follow. They cast anchor in mid-rstream, and 
make themselves snug and comfortable, as if thoy were at 
Spithead. Imagine a row of ships of war moored stem and 
stern broadside on to the shore at the Tower stairs and half 
a mile up and down the stream, and you will have some 
idea of the position of the Nimrocl, the Hornet, the Cruiser, 
the Bittern, the Actceon, and the Acorn. Half an hour after 
they had anchored, the gun-boats were running up and 
down, and the gigs, and cutters, and dingeys were row^ing to 
and fro, and the Chinamen were going from boat to boat 
with oranges and bananas for sale, as though we had been 
settled here for a lifetime. 

Having thus satisfactorily settled matters on the river, let 
us go ashore. Not to that left-hand shore to which you 
might jerk a biscuit from this poop now swinging to the 
tide, for our deaths are worth dollars there. If any accident 
were to drift us there, our heads Avould certainly be set U]-> 
in company with that of the poor fellow v/hose head was cut 
off in that unfortunate expedition of Lieutenant Pym. To 
repeat a bad pun made by a friend at my elbow, " it would 



OUR QUARTERS ON HONAN. 301 

not be pleasant promotion to become head of the staff on that 
side of tlie river." On tlie Plonan side there are broad stone 
landing-places and ranges of warehouses, which by right of 
conquest, or perhaps we should say by '-special occupancy" 
(a phrase which wants a situation, as the law has just dis- 
charged it), belongs to us. There is a small Union Jack 
upon the roof of one of these, and a larger tricolour upon 
another. Here, then, let us land. 

There is a part of the " 'long shore " of the borough of 
Lambeth which, accordiug to a superstition rife among 
London cabmen, forms a short cut to the Dover railway. 
The streets are of a preternatural narrowness, and zig-zag 
about at angles of the greatest possible acuteness. Ware- 
house walls rise high and windowless on one side, and 
wretched shops exude frowsy odours on the other side. 
There is a perpetual block of cabs and carts, a clamour of 
angry voices of men whose hope of catching the train grows 
fainter every moment, a jostling of pedestrians, a Dutch con- 
cert of oaths, and a general mass of confusion closely packed. 
"We must allow for some change of circumstances. Sub- 
stitute laden fatigue parties for cabs and carts, rushing 
orderlies for impatient travellers, marching detachments for 
a struggling populace, and then our borough waterside 
thoroughfare will not be unlike the new British and foreign 
conquest on the island of Honan. We are scarcely landed 
before we are swept into the tide of human beings which 
rushes and eddies in this narrow lane. The warehouses to 
the left are all open, let us take refuge in one of them. It 
is a strongly built brick building more than two hundred 
feet long by one hundred feet broad. At the other end 
there is a doorway leading to the river, and a loft divided off 
into compartments. This storehouse is about thirty feet 
high, and its roof is supported by rows of square brick pillars. 
It offers a great area with comfortable accommodation for 
a numerous body of troops. 

More than half a mile of river front is occupied by these 
packhouses : and when we have filled all these, there are 
plenty more upon the island. As we visit several others we 
find great stores of tea and bales of English cotton. One is 
already occupied by a battalion of marines. Nice beds of 



302 CHINA. 

junk mattiDg have been made up along the sides of the 
building, arms and accoutrements are hung upon the walls 
and pillars, and in the central parts of the area the men are 
squatting or lolling round their cooking fires and frizzling 
their rations. 

Our object in visiting these places is to obtain a guide to 
head-quarters. In the narrow thoroughfare I see hundreds 
whom I know ; but all are in a state of struggle, either on 
duty or looking for quarters. At last we find the place 
where the senior colonel and his brigade-major, Colonel 
Holloway and Major Travers, attended by Captain Ellis, the 
colonel's aide-de-camp, sit in conclave — the Minos and 
Rhadamanthus of these regions. Let us stand by a few 
moments and mark the curious scene. A knot of Chinamen 
are chin-chinning Minos — a kindly-hearted and gentle-spoken 
Minos. One is complaining that some sailors have broken 
into his store of preserved ginger, and are not only eating 
the excellent ginger, but destroying. In a moment Colonel 
Holloway gives him a pass and a guard, and explains to him 
that if his property is not taken away in thirty hours, the 
guard will be withdrawn. So with the owners of tea and 
with the proprietor of those cotton bales, and so with 
the stolid owners of the shops and minor storehouses, all of 
whom have neglected the v/arning given them to clear out. 
Fancy the addition which the removal of these heavy goods 
by a thousand Chinese coolies must make to the confusion 
of that narrow lane below. This is only an item of the 
business done at head-quarters. Fifty soldiers come to copy 
the brigade orders, which the colonel and the major have 
passed the night in drawing out. Every moment some 
ofiicer reports himself Every minute some, to me unin- 
telligible difficulty is reported, and is solved by a prompt 
sentence of command. By Jove ! these military men 
get through business- quickly. Our little party is dismissed 
with a word and a scratch of writing, and in two hours I 
have a small square compartment marked out by bamboo 
sticks, matting, and piled tea-chests, where, with a chair, a 
table, and a sofa — the abandoned household gods of som^ 
departed Chinaman — I establish myself in peace, within 
'Shree hundred yards of the guns of Mr. Commissioner Yeh. 



& 



CANTON FHOM THE HONAN SIDE. 303 

Some of ITS pass the rest of the day on the angular roof 
of the highest pack-house, and look down on the river and 
the city. There is nothing picturesque about the view of 
Canton. No domes and minarets rise from the mass of 
habitations. No lofty temples, no high monuments, repre- 
sent historic memories and immortal aspirations. The far- 
stretching dull level of gray roofs is broken only by the 
square pawnbrokers' warehouses (just like the warehouses in 
our docks) ; by the little watch-boxes erected upon high 
scaffoldings of bamboo, and looking like multitudes of large 
pigeon-houses ; by a few mandarin poles, and by the moun- 
tains and hill forts behind the city. Away to the left this 
plpin of roofs stretches to the horizon. In the foreground, 
almost at our feet, lie the waterside houses, almost hovels, 
and generally built on piles. Masked by these, and only 
visible on close inspection, are the outer walls of the city. 
Now and then you can see an embrasure, and the macch of 
a Chinese sentry shows the continuity of the wall. The 
first discharge of the Chinese guns will topple down the 
rickety buildings, and show the strength or weakness of the 
outworks. It will also, as our naval friends take care to 
inform us, knock all our pack-houses " into a cocked hat." 

The river swarms with gun-boats all freighted with closely 
jDacked red-coats — a terrible sight for the gazing crowds 
opposite. These gun-boats come up at full speed, disembark 
their men at the river entrance of the proper pack-house, 
and in half-an-hour that pack-house becomes a comfortable 
barracks. Those marines, however, are not so jolly. They 
are fresh from England, with ruddy faces and sweet blood on 
the surface of their skins. They are turtle and venison to 
the Chinese mosquitos. These despicable enemies have 
bunged up some eyes and blotched many faces. How the 
marines do swear ! 

A toilsome day brings a weary night. There are all sorts 
of "shaves" about night attacks, mines under the pack- 
houses, fire-rafts, and such like amenities. But my real 
enemies are the mosquitos and the Browns. Just as in- 
tense fatigue overcomes the mosquito bites, I am startled by 
loud voices, which every half-hour hold this dialogue : — 

" Who goes there ? '' 



304 CHINA. 

" Brown." 

'■• What Brown 1 " 

"Mrs. Brown." 

" Halt, Mrs. Brown ; advance one, and give parol." 

Confound this family of Browns ! It's a shame of Colonel 
Holloway to allow women in a place like this, and especially- 
such a restless animal as this Mrs. Brov/n. She has kept 
2,000 men awake all night. 

At breakfast next morning I inveighed indignantly 
against Mrs. Brown. My messmates, with some merriment, 
insist that the respectable name of Brown is not in fault'. 
I suppose I must take their words for it that the dialogue 
runs, " Who goes there 1 " " Bounds." " What rounds 1 " 
" Visiting rounds." " Halt, visiting rounds ; advance one, 
and give the parol." But I could still swear any Brown's 
life away upon the evidence of my ears. 

Sunday, Dec. 20. 

Confusion has subsided into a regulated busy action. We 
had divine service this morning in the largest pack-house. 
1,200 marines made up the congregation. Colonel Hocker 
has induced his non-commissioned officers to form a choir, 
and the psalms were chanted in a style that would do credit 
to St. Paul's. There being no provision for the spiritual 
wants of the marines when brigaded ashore, the admiral 
attended with his chaplain. It was, I think, the most im- 
jDressive religious service I ever witnessed, except, perhaps, 
that simpler spectacle which preceded the battle of Fatshan. 
The only drawbacks were, that the jjrincipal bass was on 
guard, and the tea-chest seats ever and anon broke down. 

Tuesday, Dec. 22. 
Yesterday and to-day, all day long, up and down the river. 
With revolvers in our pockets we do not hesitate to trust 
ourselves to a Chinese sanpan. These wretched boatmen 
are glad to earn English shillings, and have not enterprise 
enough for open kidnapping. I pass hours in watching the 
sappers and miners (twenty-five of whom most opportunely 
arrived by the mail steamer) laying the platforms for two 
13-inch mortars on the islet called Dutch Folly and for two 
others on the peninsula called French Folly, about a mile 



A KECONNAISSANCE. 305 

further down the river. How beautifully these men (aided 
by the crews of the Cruiser, the Nimrod, and the Hornet), 
throw up their breastworks amoug those ruins of the old 
forts, and how cunningly and quickly they construct their 
magazine. Chinese guns are i)ointed on the spot, and rifle- 
men are perched on the stones about us to return their fire 
should it open. But Yeh does not disturb us. He pro- 
poses, no doubt, to let us go the length of our tether, and 
kill us all in the city, with mines, and musketry, and grape. 
Captain Dew has arranged a barrel which hoists up to the 
truck of his mainmast. From that elevated and uncomfortable 
spot I could see into the court-yard of Yeh's yamun. Two 
Mrs. Yehs were hobbling about quite cheerily, but I think I 
saw signs of removal. 

Wednesday, Dec. 23. 

Last night the general arrived, and the news soon spread 
that a conference • was held on Monday, at which the two 
plenipotentiaries_, the two admirals, and the general were 
present, and that the diplomatists formally handed over the 
affair to the belligerents. 

The business of to-day was a reconnaissance in force to get a 
near view of the forts to the north of the city. At two o'clock, 
the Dove, the Janus, the Drake, and the Kestrel gunboats, 
with seventy marines and twenty-five French bluejackets 
(who are disciplined like our marines), started. The two 
admirals, the general, and Colonel HoUoway, with their suite, 
were in the Dove. West of the city, the river which 
washes the base of Canton, makes a sharp turn to the north- 
ward, so that about four miles up the stream is at the same 
distance from the forts as it is at the pack-houses. Up these 
four miles we steamed ; passing Puntinqua's garden with 
its little white pagoda, and many other well-wooded in- 
closures — passing also a dismantled fort on the left bank, 
and arriving, in about an hour, at the village of Tsing-poo. 
This was where Gough landed to attack the city. The bank 
consists of elevated ground, hillocks from which batteries 
might sweep the river, and there are buildings and loop- 
holed walls whence deadly discharges might come. The 
leaders jumped from their boat, and we paid the French the 

X 



306 CHINA. 

compliment of allovv^ing tlie fii'st of their bluejackets to land 
a moment before the first of our marines ; then away we all 
went inland at a killing pace, for the two admirals and the 
general stretch out like prize pedestrians. It was a beau- 
tiful breezy walk over a mile and a half of undulating 
country. We were now in front of the forts, which rise 
before us in extended panoramic view — not confused and 
foreshortened, as we see them from the pack-houses. They 
extend along a spur from the White Cloud Mountain, a line 
of mameion-shaped hills which stretch from the mountain 
down to the north of the city, and one of which in- 
vades Canton itself. It was a pretty sight on this sunny 
December day to see the little parties of redcoats and blue- 
jackets posted upon different hills to prevent our being cut 
off, and ready to support each other, while the reconnoitring 
j>arty climbed the nearest elevation, where, within 1,800 
yards of Cough's fort, and within 1,500 of a heavily armed 
bastion, the chiefs took a survey through their glasses of the 
heights to be climbed. Captain Bate mapped the country, 
Major Clifford, whose miniature Victoria Cross attracts 
every eye, took plans of the fortifications, and your humble 
servant made a rough sketch of the interesting panorama 
before us. We are v/ithin range of all these guns, and 
tremendous in size they are. There are some fellows in that 
bastion training a gun to bear upon us, and we expect every 
moment to see the puff of smoke. The monster guns of the 
Chinese throw solid shot, and being fired upon the non- 
recoil principle, carry to enormous distances. At Fatshan. 
I saw a ball fired from 2,000 yards come on board a gun- 
boat, pass through a gun-carriage, knocking it into splinters,. 
and go out through the stern. I suspect, however, that 
there is some truth in what a deserter told us yesterday. 
He says that Yeh is waiting for reinforcements, that he has- 
sent to collect all the forces of the two Quangs, and has given 
orders that not a gun shall be fired lest it should precipitate 
the attack before his succours have come in. This man was- 
disbelieved because he was an ill-favoured, hang-dog looking 
fellow — as though a deserter was likely to look like an 
honest man ! 

It was a ra-;:»id affair, that reconnaissance. YVe returned 



THE POINT OF ATTACK. 307 

as swiftly as we came, and were back in our quarters by- 
six o'clock. 

To the general it was very useful, for it showed him, if I 
mistake not, that an attack on this side would cost him five 
hundred men. The bluejackets are all for going helter- 
skelter at the forts, and swear they would carry them in 
four hours ; so in all prohahility they would : but the 
general prefers certainties to probabilities. 

To me this little expedition was invaluable, for it is only 
little by little that I can hope to gain or to convey to my 
readers an accurate idea of this great city. When I look at 
it from the pack-houses I despair of being able to see or to 
describe the assault. Canton is at least as large as the 
Surrey suburbs of London ; it is quite as flat, and it contains 
1,000,000 inhabitants. Captain Dew's pork-barrel at the 
main-truck of the Nimrod will be occupied by the captain 
for the purpose of directing his guns ; but if this were not 
so, it would not be of much use for close observations to the 
dizzy head and swimming brain of a landsman. How can I 
hope to follow the fortunes of 5,000 men penetrating that 
labyrinth by different routes ? 

Thuksday, Dec. 24. 

To-day there was a reconnaissance on the eastern side of 
the city. Two gunboats at daylight landed the recon- 
noitring party at a creek about a mile to the east of the French 
Folly. We struck inland over low hills covered with graves, 
and soon reached a picket-house, which had twice fired upon 
and repulsed previous small exploring parties. We came 
prepared to force it ; but the party was withdrawn as we 
approached. They were about two hundred. We crossed a 
paved causeway leading towards the city, and continued 
our trot over the steep and slippery graveyards, and over 
the dry, hard paddy fields until we arrived at an eminence 
which the leaders seemed to think gave the required coup 
cVceil. We were now about eight hundred yards from 
the great eastern gate of the city, and the same distance 
from the eastern fort outside the city. The gate lay to the 
west of us, and the fort was to the north. Some inter- 
vening trees martially interceDted the view of the city walls 

X 2 



308 CHINA. 

and gate ; but the fort was open to view. The general had 
seen enough. This is evidently the route of the attacking 
party. The fort before us will be taken at a rush, and this 
will give us a strong position, whence the wall can be 
breached or escaladed. Over that wall is the northern half 
of the city, where the public offices and great yamuns and 
pleasure-gardens are, and where there are no narrow streets. 
Thence our storming party will assault the Magazine-hill, 
and thence all the long line of hill forts we saw yesterday 
will be taken in reverse. The general, I am told, makes it 
a point of honour — or rather a point of art — to take that 
terrible Gough Tort without the loss of a man. It is 
lucky for lis we have not E-ussians to fight with here ; in 
the hands of the engineers who fortified the heights of 
Sebastopol this city would be impregnable. During the 
reconnaissance every eminence was crowded with multitudes 
of Chinese, and mandarin soldiers were running about the 
walls with little flags ; but if they contemplated any attack, 
we were come and gone before they could make their 
preparations. 

The reconnoitring party were back to breakfast at eleven 
o'clock, having accomplished a " most satisfactory " survey 
of the ground. 

In the afternoon proclamations were distributed along 
the Canton shore, warning the inhabitants that Yeh had 
rejected the terms offered, and that if the city were not 
surrendered within forty-eight hours it would be bombarded 
and stormed. The time of issuing this proclamation was 
chosen so that it might expire on Saturday night. Sunday 
will then intervene, and thus give the people some more 
hours to clear out, and the authorities more time to look at 
our preparations, and make up their minds as to the futility 
of resistance. 

We must have this city. The island of Honan would be in 
a few months a charnel-house of British troops. At present 
they are wonderfully healthy. In Colonel Hocker's battalion 
there are only fifteen sick out of seven hundred men. This 
is attributable to the cold weather, the plentiful fresh 
rations, beef, and even Shanghai mutton five times a week ; 
and the extraordinary supplies we have of quinine wine. 



"WILL YEH YIELD?" 309 

The intelligent arrangements of the commanders must of 
course have their due acknowledgment. But all these will 
be powerless to prevent sickness if hot weather should find 
us here. I have only described the allied position yet, not 
the island of Honan. The pack-houses and stores only form 
the fringe of this great island. The country behind our 
barracks is a swamp. The stagnant water comes up to the 
wall at the rear of our quarters. The general aspect of the 
island to the back of our position is like that of the Isle of 
Dogs, without its drains. Even now, when the nights have 
become cold, it cannot be healthy. Three months hence 
it will reek with pestilence. 

''Will Yeh yield? " is still the question in every mouth. 
It makes one's heart ache to think of the miseries that must 
fall upon this doomed city should he still hold out. It is 
not we who shall destroy and plunder ; but if we may trust 
the precedents of all foreign sieges, the commencement of 
the bombardment will be the signal for all the dangerous 
classes of Canton to sack and fire the city and carry off their 
loot. We shall probably stand by, as we did at Che-kiang- 
foo, guarding their exit, and thinking we are doing a humane 
act in allowing " the poor Chinese " to remove their property. 
For the merchants and the mandarins, especially the former, 
I have no sympathy. It is they who have rendered all this 
necessary. It is they who, for their own pecuniary profit, 
excited the populace, subscribed to hire " braves " and print 
lying proclamations, and prevented the carrying out of the 
treat}^ It is they who have kidnapped and tortured our 
countrymen. It is they who have built triumphal arches in 
the city to commemorate the expulsion of the barbarians, 
who wear decorations showing the part they took in the 
good work, and who travel northwards to Amoy, Foochow, 
Ningpo, and Shanghai, and twit the contented people in 
those parts with their cowardice in not cuffing and spitting 
upon the barbarians even as the brave Cantonese have done. 
Canton must fall. Even in the interest of the Chinese, 
Canton must fall. But how gladly should I close this letter 
by saying that it has fallen without a shot fired or a life 
sacrificed. 



310 CHINA. 

Christmas Day. 

The besiegers are resting from their labours. The 59th 
have come up, but have not yet disembarked. The mortar 
batteries on Dutch Folly have been completed ; the works 
on the French Folly have been abandoned. Everyone's 
ingenuity is taxed, and, moreover, the fleet is most heavily 
taxed to get up the materials for some Christmas festivity. 
The trees on Dutch Folly have been robbed of their boughs 
to do duty for holly — mistletoe we have no use for — but the 
ration beef is not cut in barons and sirloins, and the plum- 
puddings, though made by stalwart marines, are mockeries, 
delusions, and snares. 

Will the mail take you the news of the fall of Canton 1 
Not if we have to take it by force. On Monday morning 
the batteries open. On Monday, at twelve, the mail leaves. 
It is not one of the contract mails, and it cannot be delayed 
without risk of missing the steamer at Galle, a contingency 
which happened to the letters to which the last English 
mail ought to have brought us answers. The consequence is 
that the word '' China" does not once occur in our last files 
of the Times — a pleasant thought for soldiers and sailors 
who, 15,000 miles away, look to home for sympathy and 
encouragement. 

Saturday, Deo. 26. 

This day passes in anxious preparations. The men of the 
pen are preparing copies of the plan of attack both for the 
fleet and the army. The boats are hurrying about, trans- 
shipping munitions of war. The only people who look quite 
happy and unconcerned are the Chinese coolies, who, exult- 
ing in the magnificent daily ration of two pounds of rice and 
half a pound of salt beef, carry huge loads about right 
joyously, grinning and chattering like monkeys. Captain 
Hall and Mr. Parkes continue their dangerous labour of 
distributing proclamations. They land a strongly armed 
company suddenly in a suburb and post up the proclamation 
or distribute it to the crowd which soon assembles. In one 
of these rapid descents Captain Hall caught a mandarin in 
his chair, not far from the outer gate. The captain pasted 
the mandarin up in his chair with the barbarian papers, 
pasted the chair all over with them, and started the bearers 



A PLACARDED MANDARIN. 311 

to cany this new advertising van into the city. The 
Ohiuese crowd, always alive to a practical joke, roared. 
These belligerent billstickers have brought off some Chinese 
counter proclamations. Arrogant to the last, these papers 
say that the rebellious English, having seduced the French 
to join in this rebellion, it becomes necessary to stop the 
trade altogether, and utterly to annihilate these barbarians. 

This evening the orders were issued detailing the plan of 
attack. 

From the general orders I extract the following : — 

"GENERAL ORDEES. 

" Head-quaeteks, Honan, Dec. 26. 

*' 1. The troops under command of Major-General Van Straubenzee, 
C.B., will be formed into brigades as follows : — 

"1st, ok Colonel Hollowat's Brigade. — 1st battalion royal 
marine light infantry ; 2nd battalion, ditto, under command of Colonel 
Holloway, aide-de-camp ; brigade-major. Captain Travers, I'oyal mai'ine 
light infantry ; and aide-de-camp, Captain Ellis, ditto. 

''2nd or Colonel Graham's Br'gade. — Eoyal engineers and 
volunteer company of sappers, royal artillery and royal marine artillery, 
provisional battalion royal marine light infantry, 59th regiment, 38th 
Madras native infantry, under command of Colonel Graham, 59th regi- 
ment ; brigade-major, Major Luard, 77th regiment ; aide-de-camp, 
Lieutenant Eacket, 59th regiment. The whole of the artilleiy will be 
placed under the orders of Colonel Dunlop, E.A. Captain Morrison, 
1st battalion royal marine light infantry, is appointed provost-marshal." 

The general order issued by the admiral is as follows : — 

"GENERAL ORDER. 

" Before Canton, Bee. 26. 

"The naval and military Commanders-in-Chief of the allied forces 
before Canton have agreed to the following order of operations against 
the city. First bombardment to commence at daylight on Monday 
morning, the 28th of December : — 

"The ships and vessels named in the note (under letter A''=), on the 
signal hereafter indicated being made, will open fire on the south-west 
angles of the city v/alls, with a view to breach them, and impede the 
communication of the Chinese troops along their parapets to the 
eastward. 



* (A) Actoion, Phlcgdlion, and gunboats. 



312 CHINA. 

"The ships and vessels named in the note (under letter Bf), and the 
Dutch Folly, with a similar object, will breach the city walls opposite 
the viceroy's residence ; the mortars in the Dutch Folly likewise 
shelling the city and Gough Heights. 

" The ships and vessels named in the note (under letter CJ), between 
the Dutch Folly and the French Folly, will open fire on the south-east 
angle of the new and old city walls, and the walls forming the east side 
of the city. 

"These three several attacks will commence simultaneously when a 
white ensign shall be hoisted at the fore of the ActcBon, and a yellow 
flag as a corresponding signal at the same time hoisted at the fore of 
the Phlegethon. 

" The Hornet and the Avalanche will repeat these signals at their 
fore so long as the flags shall remain flying on the beforementioned 
ships. 

"The bombardment is to be in very slow time, and continued day 
and night, not to exceed per each gun employed sixty rounds § during 
the first twenty-four hours. 

" Immediately the bombardment opens, the landing of the allied 
force will take place at the creek in Kupar (where the British and 
French flags will be planted), in the following order, commencing at 
daylight : — 

" 1. Sappers and miners, 59th regiment, royal artillery, stores, 
ammunition, &c. 

"2. The French naval brigade, stores, &c. 

" 3. The naval brigade, under the orders of Commodore the Hon, 
C. Elliot. 

" 4. The naval brigade from Canton. 

" 5. Lieut,- Colonel Lemon's battalion of royal marines. 

"6. Colonel Holloway's brignde of royal marines, &c. 

"The disembarcation of the French forces will be superintended by 
Captain Reinaud, flag-captain ; the British troops and royal marines, by 
Major the Hon. H. Clifford. 

'■'The British naval brigade, by Captain W. K. Hall, C.B., flag- 
captain. 

- "The following will be the disposition of the united forces after 
landing : — 

"British naval brigade on the right. 

"Centre brigade, composed of Lieut.-Colonel Lemon's pi'ovisional 
battalion, 59th regiment, royal artillery, and sappers. 

" French brigade on the left. 

"Colonel Holloway's brigade in reserve, with royal marine artillery. 

" After getting into position, the allied forces will remain in line of 
contiguous columns of brigade until further orders for an advance. 



't'(B) Mitraille, Fusee, Cruiser, Hornet; gunboats iW^rer and ^raZancAe. 

:I:(C) Nimrod, Swrprise, Dragonne, Marceau, gunboats. 

§ Except the ships under letter C, which will fire 100 rounds. 



GENERAL ORDERS. 313 

•whicli will be made to a position for the night, preparatory to active 
service iu the morning. 

"M. Seymour, Eear- Admiral Commander-in-Chief 
of her Britannic Majesty's naval forces, 

"C. Eegnault de Genouilly, Eear -Admiral 
Commander-in-Chief of his Imperial Majesty's 
naval forces. 

"C. F. Van Steaubenzee, Major-General com- 
manding the military forces. 

"M. C. Seymour, Flag-Lieutenant." 

The naval brigade will be composed as follows : — 

" Commodore the Hon. G. J. B. Elliot, C.B., to command the 
brigade. 

" 1st division. — Captain the Hon. Keith Stuarfc, Captain G. S. Hand, 
Commander G. F. C. Hamilton, Commander F. A. C. Brooker; the 
Sylille, 8 officers and 153 men ; the Nankin, 9 officers and 208 men ; 
the Samioson, 3 officers and 48 men ; the Racehorse, 3 officers and 
49 men ; the Ellc, 3 officers and 45 men ; the Tnjiexihle, 3 officers and 
52 men: — Total, 584. The Sybille's and Nanhin's boats' crews to 
form a company. 

" 2nd division.— Captain A. C. Key, Commander A. W. L. Hood, 
Commander J. A. Slight ; the Calcutta, the Sanspareil, the Acorn, and 
the Macao Fort, 474 men. The Calcutta's and Sansparell's boats' crews 
to form a company. 

'* 3rd division. — Captain Sir E. M'Clnre, Knt. ; Captain Sherrard 
Osborne, C.B. ; Captain the Hon. A. A. Coclxrane, C.B. ; Commander 
W. M. Dowall, Commander Charles Fellows ; the Esl; 6 officers and 
104 men ; the Niger, 4 officers and 65 men ; the Highflyer, 5 officers 
and 64 men ; the Hornet, 4 officers and 65 men ; the Cruiser, 4 officers 
and 65 men ; the Furious, 10 officers and 70 men : — Total, 446. 

"Grand total, 1,501." 

I am sorry I cannot give you the names of officei's and 
the composition of the French landing force. The French 
have a feeling in regard to the publication of their arrange- 
ments which I of course respect. The position and num- 
ber of their ships are a fact patent to all eyes, and I 
have therefore included them in the plan which I forward 
you.* 

In the list of the naval brigade we miss the name of 
Captain Edgell. The non-arrival of the Princess Charlotte 
keeps the Tribune a prisoner at Hongkong. It is sometimes a 

* This plan is inserted in this volume. 



^.■; 



314 CHINA. 

penalty that a man pays for being a perfectly reliable officer 
that he is wanted for some responsible post where energy 
and judgment are indispensable. Such is Captain Edgell's 
oase ; but we are all here too much indebted to his unweary- 
ing industry and foresight to forget him. As protector of 
Hongkong and general agent to the fleet he is doing more 
important work than he could do even here. 

Monday, Dec. 28. 

It is five o'clock in the morning, the north wind whistles 
through the shrouds, and it is thick darkness as we climb 
he rigging to the main-top of her Majesty's ship . 

Yell knows what must happen at daybreak. It has been 
told throughout the fleet, it has been intentionally allowed 
to be known to the bumboatmen and all who have commu- 
nication with the opposite shore, that the bombardment will 
commence at daybreak. The frequent reconnaissances on 
the eastern side have also told them that the attack will be 
on that side, and we know they have taken the hint, for two 
new embrasures have broken out yesterday, and guns have 
been mounted in them. 

Before the first streak of daylight every glass is directed 
upon the berth of the green passage boat. We call it How- 
qua's boat. It is moored on the other side of the river, and 
used to carry messages to and fro, and always has' a white 
flag flying. The boat and the flag are still there, but she 
does not move. No, she does not move. I must use the 
seamen's more practised eyes to tell me so, for I cannot yet 
distinguish objects. Surely, surely, these men will yield 
while there is yet time ! There seems to be no thought of 
such a thing. Had there been, it is now too late. A cheer 
tells me that, not in the dawn, but in the less thick darkness, 
up goes the white ensign to the main of the Actoeon, and at 
the same moment a yellow flag flies on the main of the 
Phlegethon. I expected at that moment to hear a concus- 
sion that should have shaken the earth. Not so. A drop- 
ping fire, gun by gun, runs along the line. I fancy that the 
Cruiser, which has the guns from the bastion in front of 
Yeh's yaniun pointed down uj)on her deck, fires a broadside 
to anticipate them, but I may be mistaken, for I am some 



THE FIRST SHELL. 315 

way off, and the puffs of smoke are already wreatliing about. 
Some minutes elapse, and the light strengthens. Then off 
goes one of the mortars upon Dutch Folly. It is fired at 
Gough Fort. The whistling shell speeds high over the city 
— -just as I have often seen them, and heard their plaintive 
whistle over the heights of Tchernaya, or from the earth- 
works on the north of Sebastopol harbour. It does not reach 
its object. At its highest elevation — far, far away — it puffs 
forth in a thin white cloud. I can now see the dark frag- 
ments falling, and in the cold, cloudless morning sky that 
little cloudlet hangs — 

"As thougli an angel in his upward flight, 
Had left his mantle floating in mid air." 

Strange fancies seize us in these highly wrought moments — 
the angel of mercy has fled from the doomed city. 

Slow and continuous, with a sombre monotony, like the 
■firing of minute guns, the cannonade continues. No broadsides 
— no quick firing — no excitement. Every gun is accurately 
pointed, after many minutes' care, to strike or sweep the 
appointed wall, and to avoid the habitations. The shells are 
not so obedient as the round shot. What the opposing guns 
are doing we cannot see, for the smoke gathers thick below 
us, and the big guns seem to have brought down the wind. 

Yainly do the mortar-shells strive to reach those hill forts, 
which seem to be sleeping in tranquil security against the 
cold grey sky. They all fall short. That red five-storied barn, 
which is called the five-storied pagoda, and which is said to 
be the barrack of five hundred Tartars, was nearly touched ; 
a shell burst half-way up the hill. But Gough Fort has 
never yet been approached. Some, who must have keener 
sight than I have, say that the Chinese are endeavouring to 
bring their monster guns to bear this way. The strength 
of the armament of those forts was placed to bear upon the 
eastern fa,ce wdien we reconnoitred them on Wednesday 
last ; but it is useless, even if practicable, to change the 
bearing of those guns. If we cannot reach them at this, 
nearly 4,000 yards' range, with our mortars, they will never 
reach us. The morning wears on and the smoke thickens, 
and still this dull monotonous minute-gun sound continues. 



316 CHINA. 

Still no sign of surrender. These strange Chinese actually 
seem to be getting used to it. Sanpans and even cargo- 
boats are movini; down the river like London lio-htermen in 
the ordinary exercise of their calling ; people are coming 
down to the bank, and watch the shot and shell fly over 
their heads. Even the great kites which hover about 
here all day have returned, and are circling above the 
smoke.* 

Now the gunboats leave their stations, embark the troops, 
and hurry down the river to the landing-place at Kupar 
Creek. I also change my position, and dot down these 
hasty memoranda as I fly. A strong body has already 
landed, and through my glass I can distinctly see the 
general and his stafl^" — protected by a party of bluejackets 
and redcoats, either marines or 59th, I can't distinguish 
which, for they are crouched on the ground — pushing a close 
reconnaissance to Fort Lin. 

Here I must leave off. It is now half-past eleven o'clock. 
The Opossum leaves w^ith the mail exactly at twelve, and I 
have small time to close my despatch and reach the admiral's 
office. 



* Many curious iustauces occurred which I had not time to write. 
During the whole of the fire the river was covered with charred 
timber. The wooden houses by the waterside had taken lire, and 
while they were yet blazing the Chinese pulled down the beams, and 
pushing them into the river towed them across between the bombard- 
ing ships to the island of Honan. By the light of the blazing houses 
strange sights were seen. A 12-pound rocket fell short and was 
burning upon the ground, a Chinaman attacked it with a fia,il as 
if it had been a living thing : of course it burst at last and blew tlie 
poor fellow to pieces. In a room opening upon the river a family were 
taking their evening meal within two hundred yards of the Phlcgethon, 
which was keeping up a constant discharge of shells, all of which 
passed a few feet over their heads. The light was so strong that the 
interior of the room was visible in all its details — the inmates were all 
eating their rice as though nothing particular was happening outside. 
The firemen were working iheir fire-engines within point blank fire of 
the ships ; and directly Yeh left his yamun the populace burst in and 
gutted it, although at that time the Cruiser was making it the target 
of her fire, I was told, although I did not notice this myself, that the 
sanpans were all day long proceeding from ship to ship, and selling 
fruit and vegetables to the sailors who were bombarding their city. 
Who can pretend to understand such a people as this ? 



CAPTUPvE OF THE EAST FOKT. 317 

Half -past 12. 

iSTo sign of surrender. The embarkation of the hmcl force 
continues, and the bombardment goes on. 

Before Canton, Dec. 29. 

Some person at Hongkong has taken upon him to delay 
the mail. Whoever it may be, it was done without the 
knowledge of Lord Elgin or the admiral, for their despatches 
went by the steamer which conveyed mine. However, I 
send you a supplementary letter. 

I broke off in my first despatch while the bombardment 
was still proceeding, while the troops were landing at Kupar 
Creek, and while the general was prosecuting a close recon- 
naissance of the East (or Lin's) Fort. 

So near did the reconnoitring party advance without any 
appearance of defenders, that we imagined the fort must be 
deserted. I suppose, however, the general had reason to 
think otherwise, for the 59th and the artillery were ordered 
up, and were posted in the broken ground to the left, while 
some of the naval brigade and marines, who had now formed 
upon a hill-side, were advanced into the village on the right 
of the fort. Immediately this movement took place, some 
matting which covered a square building on the top of the 
round stone fort was removed, and three guns from the 
lower embrasures and a volley from gingalls on the top soon 
told that the place was occuj)ied. Our men were well under 
cover, and skirmishers were pushed forward, who, with the 
deadly Enfield, made it dangerous for the gunners to appear 
in their large embrasures. They continued their fire, how- 
ever, with great pertinacity until the 9-pounder field-pieces 
were got into position, and .battered and shelled the place 
(from the village side and across the ravine which separates 
the village from the fort) at close quarters. A storming 
party was now formed, but the Chinamen had had enough 
of it, and, after firing a general volley at the advancing 
column, they absconded in some mysterious way, and were 
seen sv/arming up the hill towards Gough Fort ; a moment 
after and two men appeared in the embrasures waving the 
English and French flags. 

My view of this operation was from the river side of the 



318 CHINA. 

fort. Yvhat liappenei afterwards I saw less distinctly. 
About an liour after the fort had been in our possession it 
blew up with a loud explosion.'"' The occupying party and 
also the troops encamped on the hill side were put in motion, 
ascended the hill, and descended on the other side. I saw 
Captain Maclure's and Captain Osborne's men, conspicuous 
by their white gaiters over their blue trowsers, gather on a 
little summit and disappear into the valley beyond. There 
we lost sight of them. Yolleys of musketry and flights of 
rockets continued in that direction for several hours, and 
there was all the appearance of an obstinate fight, which 
lasted till sundown ; but whether this was occasioned by 
the discovery of some unknown fort commanding the east 
fort and rendering it necessary to blow up the latter, or 
whether some body of Chinese troops had come out into the 
open, we shall not know until we can draw out the separate 
threads of this widely spread entanglement, t 

Then came the night — and such a night ! The ships 
almost ceased from their firing, but the city soon became like 
our own Shropshire iron countries at night — a plain of fire. ' 
At first it appeared as though the besiegers were bent upon 
reducing the place to ashes ; but little by little, as I gained^ 
by a change of position, some idea of the scene as a whole, 
the destruction was not without a plan. There was a great 
blaze at the north-west angle of the city. The gate there 
is surmounted by a Chinese guardhouse, with the usual 
grotesque upward pointed roof. Shells and rockets were 
poured in volleys upon this structure, and it soon became a 
sheet of flame, through which the roof, the rafters, and the 
walls stood out in dark outline. By constant showers of 

* The explosion was occasioned by an accident. Some bags of 
Chinese powder bad been thrown over the wall, and an accidental 
spark exploded them. 

f A large body of Tartar troops came out skirmishing, firing their 
gingalls from the cover of the graves, and keeping up a constant flight 
of bamboo rocket spears. This is a terrific weapon to look at : it 
makes an ngly noise as it whirrs past you, or as it ''fids "into the 
ground, and if it strikes, the rocket goes on burning inside your body. 
It is very wonderful that out of the tens of thousands of these missiles, 
which must have been exploded among our men during these two daj^S;^ 
only one man was killed by a rocket spear. 



THE BOMBARDMENT NIGHT. 319 

rockets tlie flame was led up and down the city wall, and in 
an incredibly short time the long, thin line of fire shot high 
into the heavens, and then subsided into a smouldering 
smoke. 

While this was still raging, those vengeful rockets described 
a new parabola. They came hurtling through the moonlight 
along the line of the eastern wall. They sought out the 
three spots which have been marked as the objects of the 
triple assault of the English and French troops to-morrow. 
As those dreadful 24:-pound rockets flew, flames arose. They 
seemed to lead the fire about as a tame element, precisely 
as they v/illed ; and, strange to say, it never seemed to 
spread inwards, or to stray from the line of the city wails. 
I expect that when, at some more convenient season, I come 
to see the interior, I shall find that all the conflagrations we 
have been watching to-night with an awe-stricken pity have 
destroyed only that line of old houses which leant against 
the inner side of the wall and afforded cover to those gingalls 
whence all our great losses in affairs with the Chinese have 
arisen. I may be wrong, for I pledge myself to nothing that 
I write in this confusion of showering rockets and crashing 
roofs — if I am wrong, I can correct my impression here- 
after. 

Tuesday, Dec. 29. 

I mark the change of days, but they are not divided by 
repose. All night the city was girt by a line of flame. The 
approach of morning was indicated by a suspension of the 
rocket practice, and by the reopening of the mortar battery 
with redoubled energ}^ As the day broke the flames sank 
down and the sun rose upon a perfectly smokeless city. It 
is necessary to describe the conformation of a Chinese city 
more accurately than I now have time to do, to account for 
the rapidity with which the wallside houses perished. For 
police purposes every city is divided into walled depart- 
ments of some fifty yards square, with gates that can be 
closed. The houses that lean upon the inner walls are, in 
most cities that I have seen, divided from the rest by a 
mound or a ditch ; they are encroachments — hovels mads 
by squatters — wood and thatch, that blaze and vanish. 



S20 CHINA. 

The charges of powder must have been increased in the 
mortar batteries, for the shells now flew high up to the hill- 
forts. One of them at daybreak burst upon an embrasure 
of Eort Gough, and another went right over it. The ships 
that had been enfilading the eastern wall now ceased firinof. 
It was the moment for the assault. In the neighbourhood 
of the east fort the three divisions formed and the rush was 
made. For two hours nothing is visible bat smoke, nothing 
is heard but the rattle of musketry and loud cheering. 
What deeds are done among this broken ground — among 
these trees and brushwood — on the tops and in the inter- 
stices of these grave-covered hillocks — how fare these 
forces, spread over more than a mile of attack, what divisions 
are first, who fall and who survive, I must tell hereafter. 
At a quarter to nine o'clock the wall is gained, and I see 
the bluejackets, English and French, racing along it north- 
wards. Gough's Fort gives out its fire — let us hope without 
effect ; but, well served, its guns might sweep the wall. 
There is a check and silence for half an hour. I can re- 
cognize the blue trousers of one of the divisions of our naval 
brigade. The leaders are probably teaching them how to 
take that five-storied pagoda upon the north-western Avail. 
Along the city wall, and protected by its battlements, they 
pass, I think unscathed, the fire from Gough Fort away to 
their right, and come in front of a gleaming white battery, 
newly built, and full of guns erected upon a ledge of the 
rock upon which the wall and the five-storied pagoda here 
stand. If the assailants would only go to a proper distance, 
how these guns would riddle them. But with a rush and a 
cheer a detachment strikes from the cover of the wall, which 
the guns do not command, and houses itself safely at the 
foot of the very rock which bears the batter}-. Not a shot 
can it fire. The riflemen from the walls now ply this half- 
moon for some minutes, and in a quarter of an hour the 
detachment at the foot of the rock has gone round and 
taken the position from behind. Eelieved from these guns, 
which might have swept them down by hundreds, our men 
in serried masses are now swarming along the wall. The 
five-storied pagoda (which is no more a pagoda, according to 
our notion of a pagoda, than it is a bumboat, but an old 



CAPTURE OF G0UGR3 FORT. 321 

square red buildiog divided into storeys) is carried by the 
bayonet, and the French and EngHsh colours are hoisted 
simultaneously. Now, Gough's Fort opens out sulkily upon 
its late ally ; but the assailants, not waiting to reply, hurry 
along the intervening wall w-estward. I can follow theni 
for some time from my position, and I hear them cheering 
when I lose them in the hollow. A few minutes of sharp 
fusillade, and bluejackets emerge from the trees and build- 
ings upon Magazine -hill. A moment after, and up go the 
two bits of bunting which tell that this key of Canton is 
our own. 

It is now twenty minutes after ten. In one hour and a half, 
therefore, the hill defences of this city have been captured. 
Gough's Fort yet holds out, but this is a mere question of a 
few hours or minutes more or less — the Magazine-hill com- 
mands it, and it is within point blank range. 

The whole of the operations have been conducted with a 
view to occasion the smallest possible sacrifice of life, and 
especially of the lives of our own men and of our allies. 
We may hope, therefore, that the victory will be a cheap 
one. I jJurposely refrain from repeating any of the rumours 
that are flying about as to deaths and wounds, but I may 
state it as within my own knowledge, that Captain Bate was 
killed while superintending the placing of the scaling-ladders. 
Captain Hackett was also killed, and Lord Gilfurd is 
wounded in the arm. How many others are lost it is im- 
possible to say. The Chinamen are still shooting at our 
men from the tops of the houses, and if this goes on I fear 
it will be necessary to treat the city less tenderly than 
hitherto. 

While the Algerine gunboat. Lieutenant Forbes, is, with 
steam up, taking the supplemental despatches on board. — • 
2*5 P.M., — Gough's Fort is assaulted and taken. 



322 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

CAPTURE OF CANTON. 

Bivouac on the Joss-house Floor— Hall's Terrace — Description of the 
Landing-place — The Wounded — The Coolies — The French — Danger- 
ous Passage from the Landing-place to the East Gate — Seventy 
Hours of Eain — The Men upon the Walls — Pork and Fish — A 
Peculiarity of Instinct in Chinese Pigs — The Point of Escalade — 
The Morning of the 29th— The Escalade— Death of Captain Bate— 
-Affair between the Tartar Troops and Colonel Holloway's Brigade 
under the Walls — Loss in Killed and Wounded — The Forts are 
Blown up — Apathy of the Chinese — The Troops Enter the City — 

. Capture of Peh-kwei — The Treasury is taken — The French capture 
the Tartar General — The Chase after Yeh — The Capture of Yeh — 
His Behaviour — Interrogation of the Mandarin Prisoners — Yeh is 
sent on board the Ivflexihle — Peh-kwei and the Tartar General are 
re-instated in Office — Ceremony of Installation — List of Casualties. 

Canton, Satueday, Jan. 2. 

We have now been five days upon the heights and walls of 
the city of Canton, but the plain of chimneyless roofs which 
lies at our feet is as impervious as ever. Our lines down 
this Magazine-hill are not very extended, and our quarters 
are not very luxurious. In the great open joss-house on the 
top of the hill colonels, and subalterns, and orderlies, and 
servants huddle almost indiscriminately. We sleep on the 
stone floor, wrapped only in our blankets. We make fires 
to cook our food in the bronze sacrificial urns ; the servants, 
who have no blankets, wrap themselves in the dusty altar- 
clothes ; the stores of red votive candles serve to faintly 
illumine the dingy building, and also to grease our boots ; 
the table where the offerings were laid is applied to the 
purposes of the officers' mess ; the brigade major has made 
his office in one corner. The great gilded idol looks down 
serenely upon his new race of votaries. Fortunately, the 
roof is unbroken, but the appearance of the neighbourhood 
is not one of perfect repair. A 13-inch shell has burst upon 



OUR QUARTERS m THE JOSS-HOUSE. 323 

the stone terrace in the immediate front, and made a crater 
from Yvliich every near-lying thing flew up in fragments. 
At the back there is a Chinese battery with long guns of 
curious antiquity, mounds of grape-shot, and inconvenient 
quantities of loose powder ; but this has received so many 

f attentions from those distant ships whose square yards are 
only just visible here, that we climb about at the risk of 

' breaking our shins or bringing down upon our heads a 
tottering shed. The spot where I have sought shelter is the 
very point to which all our heavy ordnance was directed, for 
it was the key of the city defences. Against these fortress 
temples the monster mortars on the Dutch Folly roared, 
hitherwards the French PhlegUhon threw her great conical 

' shells and the gun-boats pointed their 10-inch guns. Dov/n- 
wards many steep wide flights of granite steps descend. 
Sometimes they are lost to sight by the roofs of the joss- 

I, houses and villas lower down, sometimes they are hidden by 
the trunks or foliage of the ancient trees. We know nothing- 
yet of vv^hat is below, for a pattering fire salutes any one 
who ventures a few yards away, and the orders are strict 
not to provoke this, lest v>^e be obliged in returning it to 
damage the city. We see enough, however, in the upheaved 

,** terraces and perforated roofs, to tell us that this must have 
been an unquiet residence on the day and night of the 28th 

^ of December, and we are not greatly astonished at knowing 
that the garrison was found much disheartened on the 
morning of the 29th. 

' But, although we cannot yet walk about leisurely at the 
foot of Magazine-hill, we can walk on the walls, and in 

^ another day or two we shall be able to pass without an escort 

* to our ships. Captain Hall is making a new landing-place 
^ at the south-east point of the city, and it is already looking 

so smart and trim that people call it " Hall's-terrace." 

* But this is quite a new aflair. Order is only beginning to 
reign in our communications. It was quite a diflerent thing 
when, on the second day after the assault, forced by hunger 
and by thirst, and by sore bones aching by contact with those 

^"^joss-house flag-stones, I descended from our heights on the 

desperate enterprise of getting up a certain portmanteau and 

'" warm wraps, a two-dozen case of sherrv, and another case 

Y 2 



324 CHINA. ^ 

full of preserved meats, all wliicli I had de]30sited for safety 
on board one of lier Majesty's ships. 

This was a more hopeless quest than any ever made after 
a golden fleece ; and, as it was successful only after two days' 
incessant work and watching, it gave me full opportunity of 
seeing everything that was going on from the landing place < 
to head-quarters. Talk of Balaklava, that interesting village 
in its palmiest days was not such an entanglement of con- >- 
fusion as the landing-place which formed the terminus of 
the communication between the army and the ships. The 
point is where a shallow streamlet or drain falls into the river, »< 
about a mile to the east of the south-eastern corner of the 
city wall. Suburban waterside hovels once covered the area 
upon which the promiscuous crowd is now raging and shout- 
ing, and pushing and struggling ; but those hovels are now 
only heaps of rubbish. Twenty or thirty ships' boats have 
their bows against the hard, the commissariat lorcha, the ( 
general's chop-boat (which, in the confusion, was once seized , 
upon by a French ship of war and taken down the river), ^ 
several gun-boats and tlie Coroonandel lie off in the river. 
Packages innumerable, baggage and bales, barrels and cases, 
munitions of war and munitions for the stomach, are piled 
about in mountains. Soon after I first saw this scene the 
thronging multitudes were Imshed, for a strong escort 
appeared, bringing down the wounded. Many a wan face 
passed which we were glad to recognize, even though dis- 
torted by pain or flung back in lassitude ', for when a man 
is hit the rumour always spreads that he is killed, and many 
of them had been already sjDoken of as dead. Nothing 
oould be more promptly or more tenderly done than the /^ 
removal of our wounded. Large hospital-ships' boats, pre- ' 
viously fitted for even a greater emergency, were near at 
hand ; and in those spacious floating houses they were all 
safely placed as swiftly as could be gently done. Then the - 
Babel recommenced; everybody wanted an escort, and 
everybody wanted a troop of coolies. Oh those patient, 
lusty, enduring coolies ! It was a valuable legacy wliich 
Colonel Wetherall left us, that coolie corps. They carried the ^ 
ammunition, on the day of the assault, close up to the rear of 
<our columns j and when a cannon-shot took off the head of ^ 



SCENES AT THE LANDING PLACE. 325 

one of them, the others only cried "Ey yaw !" and laughed, 
and worked away as merrily as ever. Their conduct has 
throughout been admirable, and Captain Temple, " the king 
of the coolies," deserves credit for the manner in which he 
has handled them. Well dressed and well fed, wearing the 
cotton uniform of a Chinese soldier, — except that the Chinese 
characters on the jacket of the Imperial " ping" are replaced 
by an English number, and that the words " Army Train" 
are written in conspicuous characters round their conical 
caps, — these stout fellows, with their bamboo poles, are at 
once the envy and the terror of the Chinese populace. "Two 
coolies, and leave to join an escort," form the highest imme- 
diate earthly aspirations of many an officer of no mean rank 
who is without a change of raiment, and who has worked 
hard for three days and tasted no porter. Other officers, a 
numerous class, are much more interested about their men 
than about their own creature comforts. They are asking 
for gun-boats and troops of coolies to get their men's kits 
over from Honan ; they might as well invoke Hercules and 
Neptune. The French are already passing in strong bodies, 
carrying up their heavy baggage to the front. Ever and. 
anon some gaping Chinaman is urged by curiosity to approach 
the crowd. Quick as lightning Johnny Frenchman seizes him. 
by the ear, pops the end of a bamboo pole upon his shoulder, 
gives him a kick in the rear, and makes him trot off, a 
pressed porter, amid the jeers of our commissariat coolies. 
When a lon«j file of baofo^ao^e-carriers has been formed, an 
escort is given, and away they go through the dangerous 
dehris of wrecked houses which intervene betv/een the 
landing place and the east gate. During this transit of about 
a mile and a half the men are fired upon from odd corners, 
slugs and gingall balls come down from the roofs of those 
square fortresses, the pawnbrokers' warehouses, and the escort 
keeps up a constant fusillade in return. The line of march 
crosses a creek, and the southern parade-ground, and through 
a long silent street, and at last reaches Colonel Graham's 
post at the east gate, whenceforward there is a now safe 
passage along the city wall, held as this is by constant posts 
of riflemen, who allow no Chinese head to show itself on the 
rooftops. In one of these transits, whereof I had occasion 



326 CHINA. 

to make five in one day, I was near being witness to a 
bloody battle. As we debouched from the parade-ground, a 
Chinese banner was seen flaunting above the ruins ahead, 
and the tramp of a large body of men was heard. Quick as 
liofhtnino' the rifles were at the shoulders of our men, and 
every revolver was pointed. The officers shouted and struck 
lip the weapons just in time — it turned out to be a body of 
bluejackets marching down, imprudently demonstrative of 
their trophies. 

If I try to paint these scenes, it is with no idea of im- 
puting blame, for no blame is due. Immediately after the 
taking of, a city of a million of inhabitants, we cannot expect 
the single landing-place to be more orderly than the door of 
the Opera-house or the Epsom entrance to a railway station. 
The men had four days' provisions in their havresacks, so 
they did not sufier ; and there were officers of willing 
energy present, trying to gradually mould the chaos into 
order — men who made no difficulties, who appeared ubiquitous 
and indefatigable, fertile in expedients, and never out of 
heart or out of temper. As I sat for hours watching my 
opportunity to furtively slip my cases among some heap 
destined for head-quarters, I had full leisure to note how 
much may be done by individual tact and firmness. During 
this time Captain Hall, of the Calcutta, Major Crealock, 
deputy assistant quartermaster-general, Mr. Power, of the 
commissariat, Major Clifibrd, assistant quartermaster-general, 
and Captain Temple, were the presiding genii of order. 
After I left I doubt not that others of equal vigour succeeded 
them. But, having slipped my last article in among the 
government stores, I lost my interest in the scene, quietly 
followed the convoy till it got to Magazine-hill, and then 
innocently reclaimed my property from the coolies. My 
mess that evening had soup and 2>Gite and capital sherry for 
dinner, while the general was dining on biscuit and tea. 

There is, however, a lesson to be learned from this ex- 
perience. The system is still bad. That landing-place scene 
still proves that a British regiment, as now constructed, 
cannot take the field. The first object and duty of a 
general is to secure his position. .For this he employs in 
guards or fatigue parties all the men who are returned to 



STRAY POKKERS. 327 

liim as fit for duty. Every regiment slionld have attached 
to it a transport train, not retained for military duty, but 
under command of the regimental quartermaster, and con- 
fined to the transport of baggage and provisions. Without 
this vre never can march ten miles inland without renewins: 
the scenes of the Crimea. 

After the time of which I have been speaking, seventy 
hours of rain fell. It was an unlooked-for event, and the 
misery it caused was incalculable. No tents had been 
brought from the depot on the river, the coolies were knocked 
up, and Colonel Lemon's battalion of marines were in the 
open nearly all the time. 

Tiie loss of efficient men by sickness was almost as great 
as that effected by all the Chinese guns, and spears, and 
rockets. 

Monday Evening-. 

In a few days we settled down in our new position. 
••' Hall's-terrace" is now complete, and we can walk about 
in tolerable security, and revisit the scenes of Tuesday's 
struggle. 

The men are cooking their food upon the walls, and there 
appears to be great plenty of pork and fowls. ISTever v/as 
an army kept under stricter discipline. The eccentricities 
of the British sailor are held under strong repression by 
Captain Morrison, the provost-marshal, and his assistants ; 
and if a man is found ten yards in front of the outposts he 
is flogged incontinently, unless he happen to be a French- 
man. Yet somehow pig is very abundant. 

" Where did you loot that pig, Jack ?" 

" Loot, sir, we never loot ; there's an order against looting, 
and it's pretty strict, as we knows." 

'• But how do 3^011 get all these pigs?" 

" Why, d'ye see, we lights our fires o' nights, and I think 
the pigs must all come to the light, and the sentries must 
take 'em for Chinamen, and fire at 'em, for we generally 
finds two or three Avith their throats cut in the morning." 

I hope Captain Morrison and the Chinese find this ex- 
planation satisfactory. It was all I could get. 

There was also a great quantity of fine carp frying and 
stewing, but these were better accounted for. A Chinese 



328 CHINA. 

magazine blew up under very suspicious circumstance&j 
dreadfully burning sixteen of our men. Another was soon 
discovered, and the powder was emptied into a pond adjoin- 
ing a joss-house. Many thousands of pounds were thrown 
into this pond, and, a few minutes after, many himdreds of 
great gasping carp came floundering to the surface. Upon 
those sacred carp the irreverent members of the British force 
are now feasting. 

About half a mile to the north of the east gate we come 
to a part of the wall where the embrasures are knocked 
down. This was where the men of the 59th and the French, 
with the English engineers and sappers attached to the 
French, escaladed. There is a bastion here — a protruding 
half square tower — and on either side of this the scaling 
ladders were fixed. The wall rests upon a bank of earth 
about twenty feet below, and at the foot of this bank runs 
the wide shallow ditch. There is still a village not greatly 
damaged on the other side. 

On the morning of the 29th this village was occupied by 
the French and by some companies of the 59th, which, 
although forming the covering party, had crept up to the 
front. Captain Rotton's guns, and four French field-pieces 
under Lieutenant-de-vaisseau Yeriot, from behind the 
village, were battering away at the walls, and had knocked 
over the parapet for a distance of thirty feet ; and the shells 
and rockets from the Dutch Folly and the ships in the river 
were from an unseen distance bursting along the whole line 
of fortifications. The orders (agreed to by all the chiefs^ 
both French and English) were, that the assault should be 
made at nine o'clock, but the men had been all night in the 
open ; they were drawn up at day-break in position, and 
the emulation between the French and English added to 
their impatience. However we may despise the Chinese, it 
required no small amount of courage to continue to crowd 
those walls, and ply their hidden assailants with guns and 
gingalls and spear rockets while those shells were bursting 
over their heads, and those guns were crumbling their 
embrasures, and the riflemen were dinging their deadly 
bullets through the loopholes. Twenty minutes before the 
a-ppointed time the French advanced, and of course th^ 



THE FIRST UPON THE WALLS. 329 

English could not be kept back.'^ Tbey had crossed the 
ditch, and were clustered under the wall before the scaling 
ladders could be brought up. A daredevil young Frenchman 
had taken off his shoes and gaiters, and M^as trying to work 
himself up the southern angle of the bastion, aided by Major 
Luard, who was propping him up with the muzzle of the 
Frenchman's own firelock, when a ladder was placed, and 
Luard, leaping upon it, stood first upon the wall.t He was 
followed by a Frenchman, the bandmaster of the 59 th, and 
Colonel Hope Graham. At the same instant of time Stuart, 
of the engineers, was balancing in air upon a breaking ladder 
at the north side of the bastion ; but, although he sprang ta 
another and got upon that, I believe that two or three- 
Frenchmen springing to the wall from the breaking ladder 
got up before him. Let me mention, also. Corporal Perkins 
and Daniel Donovan, both volunteer sappers, who held their 
place well among the French assailants, and were among the- 
first over the wall. Meanwhile, the Chinese had been 
tumbling down all sorts of missiles ; but when the allies 
were once upon the wall the great body of them retired. 
They poured down into the city and fired from the streets ; 
they dodged behind the buildings on the ramparts, and 
aimed their cumbrous matchlocks from behind them. A 
few single encounters took place, and Luard's revolver dis- 
posed of one lingerer ; but the general move was, to fire right 
and left, and hurry to the right, to sweep the wall upwards 
towards the hill. Helter-skelter, away they went, driving 
the Tartars down into the town and before them along the- 
wall, until, some hundred yards in front, they came upon a 
new body of the besiegers, who were just accomplishing 
another escalade. 

" The French have a habit of stealing a march upon their allies, by 
attacking a little before the appointed time. There was some excuse- 
however, in this instance. The men had been brought up so near the 
•walls, that the shells from our ships were falling among them, and 
they were as safe upon the walls as elsewhere. 

t I notice with regret since my return to England, that Major- 
Luard's name was not among the promotions for this affair. The 
services of the marines also, were in this gazette very niggardly 
rewarded. It is possible, however, that the promotions are not yet 
all published. 



330 CHINA. 

We have followed tlieir patli thus far. Here let lis pause 
and contemplate. At a broken embrasure about two hundred 
yards south of the north-east gate, close by a battered shed, 
where Commodore Elliot now finds scanty shelter, a scaling 
ladder yet stands. You can reckon the height of the wall by 
the rounds of the ladder — it is twenty feet. The foot of the 
ladder rests upon a bank of earth at the foot of the wall. At 
the base of this bank lies the wide ditch, perhaps forty yards 
in breadth. The bottom is covered with patches of water- 
loving vegetables, except in the middle, through which a 
muddy streamlet ripples. Look up the broken and shelving 
bank of red earth on the other side, and you see an enor- 
mous tree, which almost hides a village behind its branches. 
Further to the left, and separated from the village and the 
tree by a wide footway, is a white mud-built cottage, its 
blank gable-end turned towards us. Perhaps it is distant a 
hundred yards from this embrasure. It stands in a patch of 
vegetables, and twelve yards distant from the ditch. There 
is a low earthen fence and bunches of high reeds, which 
must prevent your seeing from this cottage down into the 
ditch. That bunch of reeds is the scene of poor Bate's death. 
This broken embrasure is where the bluejackets and the 
marines scaled the wall. In that cottage in early morning 
of the 29th the chiefs of the British force were assembled — 
the admiral, the general, and the members of their staff. 
On the overhangiug hill just beyond, by no means out of 
fire, but out of the fury of the fire, were some troops and 
divers lookers-on. Among others was Mr. Oliphant, Lord • 
Elgin's private secretary, who, with other amateurs, was 
sometimes intrusted with messages from the general, which 
brought him into dangerous proximity with round shot and 
rockets. As to the white cottage, where the chiefs found 
refuge, five large holes made by round shot still show the 
attention it received. A storm of balls and rockets from 
the wall hurtled ail round this spot, and no one could cross 
the footway to the tree and the village without imminent 
danger. It was necessary, however, that some one should 
cross that open patch of vegetables, and look down into the 
ditch, to see where the best point for placing the ladders 
would be. Captain Bate at once volunteered to go, and 



DEATH OF CAPTAIN BATE. 331 

Captain Mann, of the engineers, accompanied him. Bate 
was one of the most scientific of our naval surveying service, 
a right good officer, and a popular commander. He was, 
moreover, an eminently religious man. " My pluck," as I 
heard a very gallant officer say some weeks before this event, 
'• is quite a different thing from Ba.te's. I go ahead because 
I never think of danger; Bate is always ready for a 
desperate service because he is always prepared for death." 
Bate had run across the open patch, and was looking down 
into the ditch, when a shot traversed his body. Dr. Ander- 
sonj who saw him fall, rushed out through a fire from which 
some who saw it feared he would not return, and a seaman, 
I think Bate's own coxsv/ain, accompanied him ; but the 
stricken man never spoke. 

Meanwhile a gun had been brought to bear from behind a 
house in the village, and it was worked by Major Crealock 
and Major Clifford, and Colin Campbell, of the Opossum, 2iiLdi 
other members of the staff. Captains Blake and Cooke had 
brought up their inarines and kept up a fire at the em- 
brasures. How hot the fire was may be judged from this, 
that Captain Blake out of his half-company, firing from 
under cover, had one man killed and six wounded in a 
few minutes. 

When the fire was a little quelled, the scaling-ladders 
were advanced, and of the blue-jackets Commander Fellowes 
stood first upon the wall, just in time to meet the party 
which was advancing after their successful escalade to the 
south. Others came tumbling up, and we may be sure that 
the admiral and the general were not far behind. Commo- 
dore Elliot was well in front. The "hurrah" was now 
along the wall to the heights, as I described it in my former 
letter, and the pace was tremendous. There were several 
hand-to-hand encounters, and it is said that even the 
general had to use his revolver to disembarrass himself of a 
pertinacious Tartar. However, they ran, and rallied only 
at distant points and for short conflicts, until they were 
obliged to form and attack the Magazine-hill with more 
deliberation. Lieutenant Davidson, of the Furious, had the 
satisfaction of firing the first Chinese gun from the battery 
on Magazine-hill. It was about this time that the flank- 



S32 CHINA. 

fire from the streets grew hottest, and that Lord Gilfurd 
and, I think, poor Bowen, and several others, were hit. 

This escalade was accomplished under the fire of our own 
ships. Some men were wounded by our shells, one French- 
man was killed, and Captain Bush was twice obliged to halt 
his company because the line of our own fire was across 
their path. The loss would have been greater had not 
Major Schomberg, from his crow's-nest on the Dutch Folly, 
seen our men on the walls, and discontinued the mortar and 
rocket firing. It was, however, not the fault of the ships, 
but the impatience of the assaulting party, which caused 
this untoward mistake. The ships ceased firing at the 
appointed hour. 

General Straubenzee was hardly upon the wall before he 
was obliged to leave it. An army of Chinese, just about 
the time of the assault, had issued from the north of the 
city, and came forth into the open country — bare undulating 
moors, like the country between Buxton and Sheffield — 
waving their banners, and beating their tomtoms, and 
brandishing their shields ; and, drilled to advance, or halt, or 
wheel according to signals made by flags, they advanced, 
threatening the flank and rear of the assailants. But Colonel 
Holloway, with his brigade of marines, had been stationed 
to the north-west of Lin's Fort expressly to meet this very 
probable emergency. Covered by the inequalities of the 
ground and by the graves, the Tartars came on in excellent 
skirmishing order, and very many of them exhibited great 
individual bravery. The fire was so hot that Colonel Hollo- 
way's adjutant was shot by his side, and a few minutes after 
the colonel himself was shot in the knee. The wound did 
not, however, drive him from the field. His presence and 
energy were required to prevent his men from rushing in 
upon the scattered foe, who were firing from under cover. 
The Tartars had already been driven out of a little viHa,ge 
and a small wood which they had occupied in force, and the 
marines were pressing forward to convert their retreat into 
a flight, wdien successive messages came from the general to 
recall his men. This command has been much criticized. 
It was difficult to obey, and had it not been given, the defeat 
<of this body of the enemy ^vould have been more disastrous 



SORTIE OF THE TAETA.ES. 333 

io them ; but not, perhaps, without some loss to ourselves. 
Straubenzee's acknowledged tactics have been, throughout, 
not to expend men against such a foe. The general was 
aoting up to his system ; but the marines grumbled furiousl}^, 
Toud growl still. The men had thrown off their knapsacks 
in the heat of the fire, and when they were recalled Colonel 
Hollo way and his aide-de-camp, Captain Ellis, assisted by a 
few others, were obliged to remain in front and bring them 
in, while the men were almost frantic at being withdrawn. 

There are many episodes of this siege which I should like 
to tell, were I sure that the English public would care to 
read them. I must, however, rectify one error I made in 
my hasty sketch, written while the conflict was still going 
on. Although it was upon the testimony of my own eyes, 
I stated that the English and French colours were waved at 
the same moment from difierent embrasures of Lin's Fort — 
I now find that the French were in first. It is not of much 
consequence, for the Chinese were out before either party 
entered. However, let our brave and agile allies have the 
honour due. 

Our loss in killed and wounded durinsf this short sie2:e 
does not amount to more than ninety-six English and 
thirty-four French, and of these the wounds are under 
the average severity. The surgeons say that this is to be 
accounted for by the want of propulsive power in the 
Chinese weapons. Where the Minie ball would have 
crushed the bone, the Chinese bullet glanced, and lost its 
energy among the surface tissues. When v/e consider the 
mass of missiles flying about for so many hours, and when 
we hear of the narrow escapes which almost every individual 
of the force employed had, the number of men hit seems 
miraculously small. Let us not, however, undervalue the 
courage of our Chinese enemies. They have no knov/ledge of 
the military art. The commonplaces of attack and defence, 
which every tyro subaltern knows, are astonishing pieces of 
strategy which surprise and confound them ; their weapons, 
terrible as they are among themselves, are inefficient against 
our rifles and field-pieces, and mortar batteries with shells 
that fall and explode like mines. Let us ask, how would 
European troops stand against such odds of discipline, and 



334 CHINA. 

strategy, and weapons ? Depend upon it, the Chinese have 
the stuff in them whereof good soldiers may be made, and 
this is a fact which should not be neglected when we are 
casting about for a substitute for our vanished Sepoy army. 

From Tuesday night until Monday night we remained in 
position upon the heights and walls, waiting, apparently, 
that the city, now at our mercy, should come to us with 
offers of submission and prayers for protection. Nothing of 
the sort occurs. The imperturbable Chinamen go on just as 
though nothing had happened. We make an imposing 
military promenade all round their walls, but only crowds of 
the lowest classes come out and stare at us. The Mandarin 
soldiers have been driven from the suburb near the landing- 
place, but have been succeeded by robbers, who despoil the 
villagers, and resist our officers if they interfere. Captain 
Hall had to cut one of these fellows down as he was aiming 
a furtive blow with his short sword at Lieutenant Forbes, 
and there are few of us who have not a pike or a sword to 
show as a memorial of some encounter with these ruffians. 
The Tartar soldiers are found at night creepiDg up to our 
sentries, especially in the neighbourhood of the magazines. 
The general belief is that they come to blow us up. I think 
they come to steal the powder. Gough Fort and Bluejacket 
Fort were mined by our sappers, for we have not force 
enough to hold them. The Chinese actually came at night 
and stole the powder laid ready to charge the mines ; and a 
Chinaman was found in a magazine from which our men had 
been withdrawn because the roof had caught fire, and 
smouldered for two days before it went out. 

On Friday Lord Elgin and Baron Gros came up to camp, 
and sat upon the roof of the Chinese battery on Magazine- 
hill to see the forts blow up. It was worth the trouble of 
getting up the hill to see this sight. "When the spectators 
took their seats, both the forts were full of men. The 
French^ who, having no engineers of their own, were directed 
hj Captain Stuart, took Bluejacket Fort ; and Gough Fort 
was mined by the senior engineer officer. Captain Mann. 
When the appointed time had come and passed, a rocket 
went up, the men hurried out, and the solid stone buildings 
stood intact in their loneliness. They never looked so 



BLOV/IXG UP THV FOSTS. 335 

interesting as during the ten minutes whicli succeeded the 
rocket. Seated at only five hundred yards' distance, you could 
just see a small glimmering slow match burning down. Then 
came a succession of loud, sharp, cracking, shivering explo- 
sions, throwing fragments high in the air, and frightening, 
but not killing, a kite at the moment hovering over Fort 
Gough. There were at least twenty successive explosions 
at the larger fort. When the smoke cleared, a thousand 
years seemed to have passed in a few seconds. The square 
substantial fortification was a picturesque ruin, such as we 
see at Caernarvon or Drachenfels. It was intended that 
the two forts should go up together ; but the French were 
ready first, and the spectators were tired of waiting, so the 
drama was divided into two parts. 

People still ask, not what v:e are going to do next, but 
what the Chinese are going to do. These curious, stolid, 
imperturbable people seem determined simply to ignore our 
presence here, and to wait till we are pleased to go away. Yeh 
lives much as usual. He cut off four hundred Chinese heads the 
other morning, and stuck them up in the south of the city. 
Our leaders seem to be puzzled by the tenacious, childlike, 
helpless obstinacy — the passive resistance, of their enemy. 
"When petitioners come up to complain of some plundering 
straggler, there is a buzz of expectation in the camp. Mr. 
Parkes and Mr. Wade, the interpreters, who, by reason of 
the general ignorance of the language, are become masters 
of the position, are looked to with ludicrous anxiety. There 
is an evident hope that the gentleman with the tail is a 
mandarin with an offer of submission. 

I sometimes think that these oracles deliver rather 
apocryphal responses as to the manners and customs of 
modern Chinamen, but they certainly vrork like horses ; and, 
as our leaders must lean upon external aid, it is well they 
have men of so much pluck and energy at hand. It is, how- 
ever, an evil — one of the many evils unavoidable in China, 
that the responsible men cannot form their own judgments 
and directly superintend their own measures. 

Tuesday, Jan. 5. 

At length, after a week's pause, we have made a move, 
and a decisive move. At half-past seven o'clock the troops 



336 CHINA. 

entered tlie city, and before ten we had captured the lieu- 
tenant-governor, the Tartar general, the Treasur}'-, fifty-two 
boxes of dollars, and sixty-eight packages of sycee, and, lastly, 
the great Yeh himself. It will take me longer to recount 
how all this happened than it took the troops to ac- 
complish it. 

Last among the tiers of temples which cover the Magazine- 
hill, stands the only house in Canton city which an English 
gentleman would think inhabitable. All the rest are huge, 
dusty, ruinous, dilapidated shams. It is called Yeh's house, 
and was yet unfinished when the city was taken. The 
lattice-work is new, the paper, which does duty for glass, is 
unbroken, the grotesque decorations are fresh, and the whole 
place is clean. From the terrace of this house you have the 
best and nearest view of the city. You look up one narrow 
street running southwards, and you catch glimpses of two 
others passing in the same direction ; you can for a short 
distance trace the walls to the right and to the left, and you 
can see far out in the body of the city aline of high mandarin 
poles. These poles denote the residences of the great public 
officers, and, as our maps tell us, they open upon the " street 
of Benevolence and Love " — a principal street of Canton, 
which crosses at right angles the three streets we look up 
from this terrace. 

At half-past seven o'clock on Tuesday morning, while the 
rain was still falling, we could see from the terrace three 
columns of English red-coats penetrating into the city down 
these three narrow streets, while a detachment of four hundred 
French blue-jackets, with two guns, were advancing along the 
to our right. They are all soon lost to sight, and we must 
descend and follow if Ave would see more. There is heavy 
firing on our left, and, of course, we hurry there first. It is 
only Colonel Lemon's men discharging their rifies. Let us 
speed away to see what the general's party are doing. They 
meet with no resistance, except from the intricacy of the 
streets. But they have lost their way, overshot their mark, 
and in the labyrinth of narrow ways cannot find the yamun, 
they are in quest of. Colonel Holloway's detachment of 
four companies are more successful. They have marched 
rapidly down the street in which we saw them, and they 



ADVANCE INTO CAXTON. 337 

have paused for a few moments before a closed gateway. Ifc 
is only a passive resistance. The pioneers with a few blov/s 
of their axes open a way through this obstruction, as they do 
through a barricade wliich is erected a little beyond, but is 
not manned. The ^^eople look on from their doors, and the 
coolies carry water-buckets to and fro in the rear of the 
troops, just as though nothing uncommon were passing. 
JSTow the troops arrive at the cross-road, where one street 
strikes the street of Benevolence and Love — a fine broad 
avenue in the map, a hovel-crowded alley, ten feet wide, in 
reality. Here Colonel Holloway detaches Captain Parke 
with two companies to the left, with instructions to advance 
and seize the treasury, while he leads the rest of his men 
round to the right. A hundred paces bring him in front of 
the yamun of Peh-kwei, the governor of the city and pro- 
vince. Like the front of all Chinese yamuns, it is a dismal 
square, "with a wall on one side, whereon a gigantic beast is 
painted. The vast doors of the yamun, whereon two great 
figures like Gog and Magog are daubed, front this monstrous 
effigy. This is the place indicated in the colonel's instruc- 
tions. " Quick " is the word. A rush from the pioneers, 
and the unbarred doors move open with unexpected ease. 
*^ Front form," cries the colonel, and in a moment the red- 
coats are four abreast and advancing at the double up a broad 
granite paved causeway in the middle of an immense court- 
yard — trees and slirubs on either side of the causeway, low 
buildings forming the right and left sides, and a huge barn- 
shaped pavilion closing the square in front. In obedience to 
a few words and a few gestures sentries are thrown out, and 
while the main body is yet hurrying on every spot is guarded. 
A few Chinese guards, with pikes and matchlocks, are dis- 
armed and huddled too^ether in the front sruard-house, and 

O CD ' 

the pavilion is gained, hastily searched, and passed through. 
Another courtyard like the former now appears — more 
granite terraces and causeways, more trees and shrubs — 
more lateral low buildings, and another big dingy pavilion 
in front. This is treated just as the former was, but nothing 
is seen but miserable guards stupified by surprise, and swarm- 
ing domestics. A vast dilapidated hall, and still another 
pavilion beyond. The lateral houses appear a little more 

z 



338 CHINA. 

Labitable ; tlie paint is not so entirely rubbed ofi] the paper 
sashes are not so broken ; there are porcelain flowerpots and 
furniture, and articles of Chinese luxe lying about. This 
third pavilion is a hall of audience, rude and dirty, but im- 
posing. There is a fracture in the tiled roof, through which 
an English rocket had forced its way. There are curtained 
portieres right and left, leading evidently to private apart- 
ments. " Halt!" " Order arms!" and the muskets descend 
upon the stone floor with a ring which makes the old shed 
echo. At this moment one of the ]port{eres is raised, and an 
old man, dressed in the ordinary blue Chinese dress, but 
wearing a mandarin's cap with a red button, appears in the 
doorway. He has a black moustache, a quick eye, and more 
intelligence in his face than you usually see in China ; and he 
seems to say, as plainly as gestures can speak, " What can 
all this disquietude be about ? " Every one felt that this 
could be no other than Peh-kwei. Colonel Holloway put 
his hand upon his shoulder, led him gently back into his 
apartment, seated him in a chair, and put a guard round 
him. The old gentleman was quietly at breakfast when the 
English marines burst in. 

A few moments' delay occurred while a Chinese inter- 
preter was got up, and the governor, seeing he was in no 
immediate danger, recovered a composure which he had never 
lost the power of assuming. He was asked for his seals of 
office and his papers. It was very unfortunate, but he had 
that morning mislaid his keys. " Tell him," said Colonel 
Holloway, " not to trouble himself, for I have a master key ;" 
and at a sign a tall pioneer with his axe made his apj)ear- 
ance. The governor took up a coarse damp towel, which 
the Chinese use as a napkin, and the lost keys were acci- 
dentally found to liave been underneath it. 

Meanwhile, Captain Parke and his detachment had been 
equally fortunate. Turning to the left, and proceeding down 
the street of Benevolence and Love, they came to the large 
low building indicated as the treasury. Here also the doors 
gave way to the first rush. The surprise vv^as complete. The 
guards were, some sleeping, some cooking, some smoking. 
The military mandarin in command drew his sword, but was 
tripped up and secured j a young Tartar shouldered hia 



CAPTURE OF THE TEEASUET. 330 

matclilock and pointed it at tlie captain, but a bayonet was 
at liis breast in a nioment, and would have been in it had 
not tlie captain struck it up. All the others were motionless 
under the influence of British bayonets brought to the 
charge within six inches of their bodies. 

For six days the western gate had been open, and exit 
had been denied to neither men, nor goods, nor treasure. 
Surely there could be nothing left to reward the captors. 
How can we strain our minds to comprehend the stolid, 
stupid confidence of these Chinese officials ? The treasury 
w^as full of silver — as full probably as it ever was. Fifty-two 
boxes, which a man could not singly lift, were found, and 
sixty-eight packets of solid ingots. There was also a store- 
house of the most costly mandarin fur dresses, lined with 
sable and rare furs, and there was a room full of copper cash, 
Now a strange scene occurred. The instructions were to 
bring away any bullion, but to touch nothing else. These 
orders were obeyed with a strange and self-denying fidelity. 
The soldiers and officers in strict discipline turned their 
longing eyes away from the rich dresses. But how to 
remove the heavy load of bullion 1 Crowds had assembled in 
front, and a happy thought occurred to one of the officers, — 
" A dollar's vrorth of cash to every coolie who will help to 
carry the silver to the English camp." In a moment the 
crowd dispersed in search of their bamboo poles, and in 
another moment there were a thousand volunteer Cantonese 
contending for the privilege of carrying for an enemy their 
own city's treasure. 

With their stipulated strings of cash round their necks, 
away they trudged with the English soldiers and the sycee 
silver. Colonel Graham, who had advanced from the south 
to the same point, came up in time to direct this operation. 
When the last British soldier left the treasury the mob 
poured in like a countless pack of famished wolves. The 
retiring and self-denying English could hear their yells and 
shouts as they fought over the fur dresses and other stores 
that had been left untouched. 

Contemporaneously with these operations the French had 
followed the course of the ramparts to the west gate and 
closed it. Leaving a detachment to secure this exit, the 

z 2 



,310 CHINA. 

main body struck inwards for tlie lofty poles which mark the 
site of the palace of the Tartar general. Here, if anywhere, 
resistance must be expected. All is hollowness — all is sham ! 
They had come to force a palatial fortress ; they found a 
rank wilderness ; colossal courtyards, grass-grown and 
mildewy ; habitations with space for an imperial army, but 
not safe to the tread of a single soldier ; vast empty rotting 
halls where bats in thousands were clinging to the roofs, and 
where the floors were inches deep in their ordure. It was 
not destruction they saw around them, but decay. Upon 
Peh-kwei's table was found a return from the Tartar general, 
.saying that he had 7,000 Tartar troops under his command. 
Where were they 1 Certainly they were not, and had not 
for many years been, in this yamun. It is the custom to let 
Chinese soldiers live at their own homes, but surely they 
might be expected to be called in and posted on guard when 
an enemy had occupied all the fortifications. Yet the evi- 
dence afforded by the place itself is indisputable. The 
Tartar general must have lived here almost alone. A 
(hundred men would have trodden down this rank grass, and 
■dispossessed these horrible clustering bats. A few days 
after this event I passed two hours in this yamun in the 
company of several English and French officers, who came 
to allot it for quarters. After close inspection they came to 
the conclusion that there were only two rooms lit for the 
dwelling of a civilized man. From one of these the French 
chased the Tartar general, and they took him in a closet 
close by. 

We must now go back to the general starting point, and 
accompany the chase after Yeh. Mr. Consul Parkes, who, 
was attached as interpreter to Colonel Holloway's party, 
arrived too late, and was without an escort. While he was 
deploring his ill-luck he met with Commodore Elliot, who, fired 
by Mr. Parkes telling him that he had some information as to 
Yell's lurking-place, agreed, upon his own responsibility, to 
accompany him with a hundred blue-jackets. Mr. Parkes ex- 
pected to find Yeh at the imperial library, but upon arriving 
at that high -titled edifice he found only a great empty house. 
Having ransacked every corner, they were coming away 
disgusted, when Mr. Parkes put his foot against a closed 



THE CHASE AFTER YEH. 341 

door. It gave way, and a Chinaman was seen inside the 
closet diligently studying one of tlie sacred books. Where 
was Yeh ? How should the Chinaman know 1 He knew 
nothing of Yeh — he was only a poor student. Drawn from 
his hiding-place and subjected to a sharp interrogatory, he 
confessed, bit by bit, that Yeh had been there, but had left 
some days before. At last he even thought he knew where 
he was — nearly three miles off — somewhere at the south- 
w^est corner of the city, in a small yamun of one of the 
lieutenant-governors. Taking this " student" along with 
them, the party now proceeded to the governor's yamun. 
The governor was by this time in custody of Colonel Hollo- 
way, and the admiral and the general had arrived there. 
An examination took place, and the governor, after some 
admonition, admitted that he also knew Yeh's retreat, and 
named the same place which the student had named. He 
was made to send a second guide, and the two Chinamen 
were placed in front of the bluejackets. These unwilling- 
guides, as they were urged along through the narrow 
streets of the Tartar city, did not cease shouting to the- 
crowds which ran together, " Good people, go about your- 
affairs. These gentlemen have just had a respectful inter- 
view with Peh-kwei, and they are now going to have another 
interview with Yeh." " Yery well," said the crowd, habitu- 
ally deferential to the cap of the small mandarin. As they 
got deeper and deeper into the maze of streets some of the 
officers seemed to think they were doing an imprudent thing. 
" If the worst comes to the worst," said Captain Key, " we 
know the direction of the walls by this compass, and can 
fight our way to them ; " so on they went. The longest 
chase must have an end. At last the guides called a halt at 
the door of a third-rate yamun, which appeared closed and 
deserted. The doors were forced open, and the bluejackets 
were all over the place in a moment. It was evident that 
they were now on the right scent. The house was full of 
hastily -packed baggage. Mandarins were running about — yes, 
omnning about ; and at last one came forward and delivered 
himself up as Yeh. But he was not fat enough. Parkes 
pushed him aside, and, hurrying on, they at last spied a very 
fat man contemplating the achievement of getting over the 



342 CHINA. 

wall at the extreme rear of the yamun. Captain Key and 
Oommodore Elliot's coxswain rushed forward. Key took 
the fat gentleman round the waist, and the coxswain twisted 
the august tail of the imperial commissioner round his fist. 
There vms no mistake now, — this was the veritaole Yeh. 
Instinctively the bluejackets felt it must be Yeh — and they 
tossed up their hats and gave three rattling cheers. 

Yeh is by no means the hero people thought him. He 
trembled violently when he was taken ; he strenuously 
denied his identity ; and it was not till Mr. Parkes had 
several times had the satisfaction and triumph of assuring 
his old enemy of his personal safety that he grew composed. 
As soon, however, as he felt himself safe all his arrogance 
returned. He posed himself magnificently in his chair. 
He laughed at the idea of giving up bis seals, and also at the 
idea of his being led away. He would wait there to receive 
the men, Elgin and Gros. They searched all his packages 
for papers, and found among other things the original ratifi- 
cations of the treaties with England, France, and America ; 
they were, as he intimated, too unimportant as documents to 
be sent to Pekin. This search lasted three hours. The news 
of the capture had been sent to head-quarters; Colonel 
Hocker was despatched with a strong body of marines, and 
Yeh again trembled as he entered his chair a captive. 

At the foot of the terrace, before the great joss-house on 
Magazine-hill, off-setting from the broad steps, is a collegiate 
quadrangle. Here the dons of the ecclesiastical institution 
'Once clustered. Some small cellular apartments, opening in- 
wards towards the hill, were doubtless the private abodes of 
the bonzes ; two large rooms, whose windows look over the 
city, were the hall and senior common room. This quadrangle 
is a little changed in its uses. It has become the British head- 
quarters. The admiral and general have appropriated the 
hall and common room, and the staff are contriving possi- 
bilities of residence in the cells. The servants have utilized 
the small area— a dozen Crimean shirts are there hanging to 
<lry. 

About twelve o'clock on Tuesday the colonnade of this 
small quadrangle was loosely thronged by post-captains and 
colonels and smaller barbarian mandarins. The news that 



THE CAPTIVE MANDARINS. '3i3 

the city had been dragged, and all the big fish taken 
had spread. Every one was anxious to see the prisoners 
brought in. 

First marched Peh-kwei, whoui I have already described, 
and after him, with rolling step, almost gigantic in stature, 
and immense in bulk, came the Tartar general. As he 
passed close by me I measured him by myself; he must be 
quite six feet four high. They were ushered into a small room 
at the end of the colonnade, where the general and the two 
admirals were assembled. The two mandarins took their 
seats as though they had come of their own free will to pay 
an ordinary visit. The Tartar general, with his head thrown 
back so that you saw only the inside of the brim of his 
Tartar cap, looked not unlike our own Eighth Harry as 
Holbein shows him. There is great show of dignity and 
courage about that martial Tartar, but he is only a type 
and specimen of the great imperial sham of which he forms 
part. He is an empty imposture. During the fight he 
never appeared upon the walls. After the fight he did 
nothing to gather his 7,000 men around him. When the 
Erench came he made no defence, but ran from room to 
room, and was dragged from a filthy closet. If he had been 
taken by Tai-pings instead of Europeans he would be howl- 
ing at their feet. Knowing himself personally safe, he 
swells himself and tries to look majestic. He believes he 
has to do with men more superstitiously obsequious to 
Chinese rank than the coolies of Canton are, so he tries to 
awe them by his presence. Perhaps he is right. There is 
too much of this nonsense. 

The interpreters catch this mania of mandarin worship 
from their teachers and their Chinese books, and our leaders 
— predisposed by the truly English deference for high- 
sounding titles — catch the infectious folly from the inter- 
preters. 

What shall be done with these men ? " Send them both, 
aboard ship," advises one interpreter ; " Send them back to 
resume their functions, and to save the city from pillage," 
advises the other. Lord Elgin is consulted, and has the 
boldness to believe that the general principles of human. 



-344 CHINA. 

nature are not to be extinguislied by paper lanterns and 
peacocks' feathers. He advises " Let tliem both return 
under conditions. Let Peb-kwei re-establish his court under 
the authority of and in co-operation with an European 
tribunal. Let Tseang-keun return under condition of dis- 
banding his troops and delivering up their anna." "Im- 
possible ; they couldn't do it j contrary to all Chinese 
l)recedent," &c. " Try." The trial is made, and the in- 
dignant mandarins laugh loudly at the impudent suggestion. 
Left together for a night to consider the matter, they are 
found in the morning like pricked windbags, ready to sur- 
render their inflation under gentle pressure ; — but I am 
anticipating the events of subsequent days. 

Pvoom for the great mandarin ! Preceded by Colonel 
Hocker, with his sword drawn, accompanied by Commodore 
Elliott and Captain Key, and followed by two files of marines, 
in waddles the 2,Teat Yeh himself He is not ushered into 
the small room, but into the admiral's room. To place 
him with the governor and the general would be to confine 
a pike with two gudgeon. Peh-kv/ei and Tseang-keun shook 
at the sound of his footsteps. 

If he had six headsmen in his train, and if we all stood 
kidnapped men before him, he could not hold his head more 
haughtily. It is a huge, sensual, flat face. The profile is 
nearly straight from the eye- brow to the chin. He wears 
his mandarin cap, his red button, and his peacock's tail ; 
but in other respects has the ordinary blue quilted tunic 
and loose breeches, the universal v/inter wear of this part of 
China. He seats himself in an armchair, and some inferior 
mandarins who have pressed in after him. stand round and 
make him a little court. The officers who fill the room are 
passing to and fro upon their own duties, and of course 
refrain from staring at him. Yet no one can look upon 
that face without feeling that he is in the presence of an 
extraordinary man. There is a ferocity about that restless, 
roving eye, which almost makes you shrink from it. It is 
the expression of a fierce and angry, but not courageous 
animal. "While the long nails of his dirty fingers are 
trembling against the table, and his eyes are searching into 



YEIl BEFOUE THE AD3IIKALS. 345 

every part of the room, scrutinizing every face, his 2^ose of 
dignity is too palpably simulated to inspire respect, even if 
you could forget his deeds. But no one can look upon him 
with contempt. 

The two admirals and the general now arrive, and, after 
some salutations, which were naturally more embarrassing 
to the captors than the captive, the English admiral inquired 
wli ether Mr. Cooper, senior, was still living. You will recol- 
lect the circumstances under which this gentleman was 
kidnapped. Yeh burst forth into a loud laugh, which 
sounded to every one present as though he were recollecting, 
and enjoying the recollection of, this poor man's sufferings. 
When he had finished his cachinnations he replied, '• I can't 
recollect about this man ; but I will make inquiries to- 
morrow, and if he can be found you shall have him." 

The disgust was at that moment so great (for many in the 
room had known and esteemed poor Cooper), that if the 
audience could have decided the matter, Yeh would have 
been taken out and hanged. 

He was told that his answer was not courteous, and he 
replied that it was, at any rate, the only answer he should 
give. 

The admiral now asked whether he had any other pri- 
soners alive in his custody. He appeared to have mis- 
understood the question, for he replied, "Those eighteen 
men were my prisoners of war. I took a great deal of 
trouble about those persons, to have them properly buried. 
I can show you their graves at this day."'"" 

" What eighteen men w^ere they 1 " asked the admiral, 
" and when were they taken ? " 

'* How can I tell you who they were ; and how can I 
remember when they were taken 1 You were fighting from 
October till January, when you were beaten ofi' and ex|)elled, 
and your ships ran away. It was during this time." 

It was evidently not consistent with the dignity of the 
admirals and general to prolong this conversation. After a 
moment's consultation they directed Mr. Parkes to assure 
" his excellency " that every care would be taken for his 

* Their graves have since been discovered : they were in the common- 
malefactors' burial ground. 



346 CHINA. 

personal safety and convenience ; but tliat lie v/ould be 
removed for the present on board sliip. 

" I don't see any necessity for going on board sbip," replied 
his excellency, "I can do everything that requires to be 
done just as well here." But when Yeh observed that the 
admirals were grave and impassible, and that they were 
about to retire, his eyes roved round the room again in 
terror, and he added, " Well, I will accept your invitation. 
In fact, I shall be very glad to have an opportunity of seeing 
one of your ships." 

It was more than an hour, however, and after delays so 
frivolous that I cannot describe them, that he was at last 
fairly seated in his chair. As he progressed, with his escort 
of marines, along the walls to the landing-place, he met a 
gang of our commissariat coolies. These fellows put down 
their loads and saluted him with a roar of laughter. This 
was too much. He gnashed his teeth with rage and made 
a threatening gesture. 

The Governor's Yaniun, Jan. 14. 

Saturday last was a great day in the city of Canton. Yeh 
being safely caged in the Inflexible, and the authorities of 
the city being prisoners, the plenipotentiaries became afraid 
that the city would be sacked by the populace. It v^as 
resolved, therefore, to formally reinstate Peh-kwei in his 
palace, and to assist him with a council of three, composed 
of Colonel Holloway, Captain Martineau, and Mr. Parkes. 

About midday large bodies of English and French troops 
defiled into the city, and the yamun of the governor was 
strongly garrisoned. 

At three o'clock the plenipotentiaries and their suite, and 
the naval and military commanders passed through the 
courtyards in their chairs, and assembled in the tliirel 
pavilion, which I have already spoken of as a hall of 
audience. 

Here they for two hours awaited the arrival of the 
Chinese governor and. the Tartar general. The guns which 
were to fire the salute had lost their way in the city, the 
prisoners were not ready, and at last, when the delay had 
been supposed to be overcome, it was discovered that no 
order had been left to deliver over the prisoners, and the 



CEREMONY OF INSTALLING PEH-KWEI. 347 

faitliful sentinel opposed his bayonet to all who presented 
themselves to conduct them out. 

It was five o'clock before Peh-kwei and his gigantic col- 
league ajDpeared. It was, doubtless, an imposing sight. 
Lord Elgin and Baron Gros were seated on a sort of dais^ 
the naval and military commanders were seated on chairs at 
a right angle with the dais, and opposite to those chairs were 
others, left vacant for the Chinese. A throng of English 
and French officers, a band, and colours, filled up the hall. 
There were onl}'- three Chinamen, spectators, present. When 
Peh-kwei came in the plenipotentiaries advanced and received 
him, and, resuming their seats upon the dais, motioned to 
him to take that assigned to him. But Peh-kwei demurred, 
protested, jabbered, and pottered about, and created a scene. 
The plenipotentiaries remained silent spectators of this for 
some minutes. Lord Elgin at last yielded, and made way 
for the Chinamen beside him. With great satisfaction, and 
many grins and bows, the mandarins enjoyed the victory 
granted to their pertinacity, and sat in seats of honour, 
taking precedence of the English and French admirals and 
the British general — ill-omened evidence of weakness of 
purpose ! 

The proceedings then commenced. The ceremony was 
somewhat hurried, for the sun was setting, and we were in 
the heart of the unknown city. I must confess that I think 
it, although admirably conceived, yet badly ordered in the 
execution. If we had assembled in that hall the inferior 
Chinese authorities — if Lord Elgin and Baron Gros had then 
taken their seats — if Peh-kwei had been brought in a pri- 
soner — and if the plenipotentiaries had released him upon 
the spot, and had resigned to him their dais, there could have 
been no doubt in the minds of the Chinese as to the nature 
of the transaction. As it stands, the Chinese knoAv only 
the Peh-kwei is in his yamun, with a guard of honour. 

Lord Elgin then addressed Peh-kwei sitting. He said, 

" We are assembled here to welcome your excellency on your return 
to your yamun, and on your resumption of the functions of your ofl&ce, 
which have been momentarily interrupted. It is proper, however, that 
I should apprise your excellency, and through your excellency the 
inhabitants of Canton, that the plenipotentiaries of England and France 
and the commanders-in-chief of the allied forces, are firmly resolved to 



348 CHINA. 

retain military occupation of the city until all questions pending between 
our respective governments and that of China shall have been firnilj 
settled and determined between us, the high officers appointed by your 
governments for this service, and plenipotentiaries of equal rank and 
powers whom his Imperial Majesty the emperor of China may see fit 
to appoint to treat with us. Any attempt, therefore, whether by force 
or fraud, whether by treachery or violence, to disturb xis in our 
possession of the city, will not fail to bring down on its authors and 
abettors the most severe and signal punishment. I am, however, no 
less to apprise your excellency that it is equally our determination, 
when the questions to which I have referred shall have been so settled, 
to withdraw from the military occupation of the city, and to restore it 
to the imperial authorities. Meanwhile, it is our sincere wish that 
during the period of our military occupation the feelings of the people 
should be respected, life and property protected, the good rewai'ded, 
and offenders, whether native or foreign, punished. We are desirous 
to co-operate with your excellency for these objects, and with this 
view we have appointed a tribunal composed of officers of high cha- 
racter and discretion to act in concert with you. We hope that thi'ough 
the agency of this tribunal confidence may be restored to the people, 
and the foundation laid of a better understanding between foreigners 
and natives, so that henceforth all may pursue their avocations in 
peace, and traffic together for their mutual advantage." 

The address of the French Plenipotentiary was very 
nearly as follows : — 

*' Monsieur le Gouverneur, — Les paroles qui vient d'adresser a votre 
excellence le haut commissaire de Sa Majeste Britannique expriment 
si fidelement la pensee du gouvernement de Sa Majestd rEmpereui" 
des Fi-an^ais qu'il n'est pas necessaire de les reproduire devant vous. 
Je me borne, done, a les confirmer de tout point. J'ajouterai seule- 
ment que nous vous remercions de vouloir bien aider les commandants- 
en-chef des forces alliees a maintenir I'ordre dans cette grande cite 
jusqu'au moment oti I'heureuse issue de nos negociations avec la cour 
de Pekin nous permettra de la remettre entre les mains des ddlegues 
de I'Empereur de la dyuastie Ta-Tsing. En agissant comme vous le 
faites vous acquerrez de nouveaux titres a la reconnaissance de vos 
concitoyens ; et, tout en vous f^licitant, M. le gouverneur, nous 
faisons des vceux sinceres pour votre bonheur personnel." 

These addresses were successively translated to Peh-kwei, 
and he made an answer which the interpreter reproduced 
in so low a tone that I could not catch a word of it. It 
was, however, as I understand, only an unmeaning Chinese 
compliment, except that in his answer to the French 
jolenipotentiary, Peh-kwei said, " That man Yeh has been 
the cause of all the troubles." 



LOSS IN KILLED AND WOUNDED. 349 

I must reserve for another chapter all description of the 
virgin city of Canton, and of the doings in the governor'!:! 
yamun, where, with the little guard of fifty men left 
to retain possession, I found opportunity of getting a 
corner to sleep. We are not luxuriously located. While 
I am writing I hear the following colloquy between two 
marines : — 

'• So, Jem, the mnsquiters have been at your face, too 1 " 

" Musquiters, you call them things — blessed if I ain't been 
sleeping all night in a beehive." 

HoNGKOXG, Jan. lo. 

Last night I left Canton and came down here with the 
mail boat in order to correct my list of killed and wounded, 
and to add such remarks as to the state of the latter as I 
could safely make. 

We passed Yeh in the river, and at an early hour this 
morning I visited the Hercules hospital-ship in this harbour. 
Dr. Burns and Dr. Smart, with their assistants, were already 
at their duties ; the desperate cases are very few, and the 
men are in the enjoyment of all the care and comfort v/hicli 
can alleviate their pain and expedite their recovery. 



Xist of Casualties of Naval and Marhie Brigades hefore and in Canton, 
on the 28th, 29th, and Slst of December, 1857. 

Actceon. — William T. Bate, captain, giugall ball in chest, killed. 

Sanspareil. — Henry Thompson, midshipman, left arm and kidney 
pierced by a spear-rocket, mortally, since dead, 

Sybillc. — Edward Loft, A.B., wound of chest, mortally, since dead. 

Nanlcin. — John Jackson, blacksmith's-mate, wound of head, mortally, 
since dead. 

Highflyer. — Joseph Bailey, captain of the mast, wound of head, 
mortally, since dead. 

CalciUta. — Viscount Gilfurd, lieutenant, arm broken by a gingall 
ball, severely, but now i-ecovering ; Charles Fossett, captain of fore- 
castle, wound in right thigh, severely, doing well ; James Pearson, 
ordinary, wound right arm, ditto ; William Payne, ordinary, wound 
right shoulder, slightly ; and James Holland, A.B., wound of head, 
ditto. 

Syhille. — John Smith, A.B., left elbow, severely ; Jacob "Williams, 
A.B., graze of breast, slightly; John Burleigh, A.B., wound in ear, 
slightly ; Philip Palmer, bandsman, wound in mouth, slightly ; and 
William Jefiries, sail-maker's mate, wound in head, slightly. 



350 CHINA. 

Nanlcln. — J. Brumblecombe, ordinary, wound of arm, severely;. 
Cornelius Sulivan, ordinary, wound of breast, slightly ; William Bock- 
ham, A.B., wound of shoulder, slightly; and Alexander Charters, 
carpenter's mate, slightly. 

Sanspareil. — George Lane, ordinary, right foot, severely ; Alfred 
Watson, ordinary, right knee, slightly ; John M'Ginness, ordinary, 
wound in temple, slightly ; and William Crokei", ordinary, wound in. 
wrist, slightly. 

Eslc. — Charles Bo wen, captain of the mizentor>, wound of chest, 
killed. 

Highfiyer. — ^William Bissidu, ordinary, left arm, slightly ; and 
Eichard Sarsfield, boy, first-class, wound of head, slightly. 

Niger. — Charles Smith, boy, first-class, wound of left thigh, killed. 

Furious. — William Randall, A.B,, wound of left arm, slightly. 

Racehorse. — G-eorge Herd, armourer, sprain, slight^. 

Hornet. — William 0. Butler, lieutenant, scalp wound, severely, doing 
well ; James Fisher, master's assistant, wound of arm, slightly ; and 
John Davies, captain afterguard, woimd left eye, severely. 

Elh. — John Manuel, A.B., contusion, severely ; and Patrick Sweeney, 
leading seaman, contusion slightly. 

Cruiser. — Charles Fellowes, commander, wound left foot and wrist^ 
slightly ; William Tilbury, A.B., wound of right thigh, severely, doing 
well ; J. Dunn, captain of foretop, left leg, slightly ; 0. A. Vignold, 
acting-foretop, wound of arm, slightly. 

Irtjiexlhle. — Samuel Polwan, leading seaman, wound of hand^ 
severely. 

Royal Marines, Provisional Battalion {Lieutenant- Colonel Tliomas 
Lemon.) 

Calcutta. — Private William Mason, wound of temple, slightly ; 
Francis Musselwhite, private, wound in arm, slightly ; W. Smith, 
private, wound in ear, slightly; James Allwood, private, wound in 
head, severely — doing well. 

Syhille. — Isaac Eaton, private, wound in right thigh, dangerously ; 
William Emmett, ordinary, wound of ankle, slightly. 

Assistance. — Thomas Hill, private, burn, slightly ; John Parker, 
private, wound of knee, slightly ; John Adams, burn, slightly ; and 
Thomas Cooke, pi-ivate, contusion, slightly. 

Eoyal Marine Artillery. — Thomas Holloway, colonel commanding' 
naval brigade, right knee, slightly ; Benjamin Wise, colour-sergeant, 
left arm, severely ; James Fury, gunner, loss of left arm, severely ; 
and Robert Hoddy, gunner, wound of foot, slightly. 

First Battalion Eoyal Marine Brigade. — First Lieutenant W. F. P. 
S. Dadson, right arm, severely ; Sergeant William Rea, right leg, 
severely. Privates — William Burton, wound of head, severely ; James 
Lucas, right thigh, severely, but doing favourably ; and Frederick 
Mears, right arm, slightly. 

FsJc. — William Oxford, cooper, Henry Page and James Prior, 
ordinary, Edward Wiltshire, captain of the maintop (dying), William 



LOSS IN KILLED AND WOUNDED. 351 

Marler and William Dyer, ordinary (since dead), and Thomas Williams, 
A.B. (since dead) — severely burnt by an explosion of a Chinese 
magazine. 

Niger. — Henry Whitehead and Simon Holloway, ordinary, John 
Builimore, stoker (since dead), and William Atkins, quartermaster — 
severely burnt by an explosion of Chinese magazine. 

Furious. — Joseph M'Boil, stoker, Thomas White, captain of the 
mizentop, and H. G. Eavenhill, leading seaman — severely burnt by an 
explosion of a Chinese magazine. 

Hornet. — Thomas King, ordinary, and Edward Chancy, ordinary — 
severely burnt bj' an explosion of a Chinese magazine. 

Woodcock. — James Goi'man, quartermaster — severely burnt by an 
explosion of Chinese magazine. 



Nominal List of Casualties in the Land Forces occurring on the 2Sth and 
22th of Decehiher, lSo7. 

59th KEaiMEXT. 

Lieutenant Hackett, killed. 

Xiieutenant Thinkwin, lacerated wound of knee. 

Ensign Bowen, gingall ball through chest, coming out close to 
spine — since dead. 

Private Denis Sullivan, musket ball through right arm. 

Private Timothy Eegan, killed. 

Private Matthew Walsh, shell wound in right eye. 

Private James Bullock, musket ball in hand. 

Private James Calvert, wounds in thigh and head by shell. 

Private Patrick CNeal, contusion of knee by spent cannon ball. 

Private James Wigiey, wound in thigh by musket ball. 

Private William Taylor, musket ball entering under left orbit. 

Private Joseli Healy, musket ball in thigh. 

Private Joseph M'Namara, musket ball in leg. 

Private William Quinn, musket ball in arm and fracture of ring 
finger. 

Private John Slattley, musket ball through calf of leg. 

Private Joseph Embley, musket ball in thigh. 

Private Thomas Haddican, musket ball through shoulder. 

Private Dennis Sullivan, musket ball in face. 

Private John Skillen, musket ball wound in knee. 

Private Matthew Cronin, contusion by fall from scaling ladder. 

38th MADRAS NATIVE INFAl'TTRT. 

Eavildar Sheik Ismail, wound of scalp by rocket. 



S5t 



CHAPTER XXYIT. 

INSIDE CANTON. 

'The Blocka,de Question — The Interior of the City — Curiosity Shops-— 
Street of the Triumphal Arches — The Nine-Storied Pagod.as — 
General Character of the Houses and Yatnuns — First Night in the 
Governor's Yamun — The Three Commissioners — Their Court — The 
Depots of Arms — The Loss of the Chinese during the Siege — 
Dearth of Interpreters — Concealed Treasure in Colonel Hocker's 
Quarters — A Shrewd Buddhist Priest — Deportment of Peh-kwei 
and Yell — Proposition to send Yeh to Calcutta. 

Oovernor's Yamun, Canton, Jan. 28. 
Having gone clown to Hongkong with the last mail-boat, 
I remained there a few days to get my letters and make 
Home arrangements for a more protracted residence in Canton. 
The topics of interest in the city of Victoria were not very 
numerous. The arrival of the Princess Charlotte and the 
departure overland of Captain King — farewell dinners to 
Commodore Elliot, who takes home the Syhille — the advent 
of Captain Hall, to take the place of Captain Edgell as senior 
officer — deeds of heroism upon the walls, reported by the 
heroes upon leave — the circumstances of one or two past 
balls and the probabilities of the forthcoming races — the 
departure of the Madras troops, and expectation of others to 
supply their places — were the chief matters talked over in 
that not very eventful city. Some benevolent individuals 
amuse themselves by throwing pebbles into the stagnant 
socialities of the island, by inventing some egregious ''shave." 
Yeh was a frequent hero of these fictions. At another time 
Peh-Kwei had absconded. Then the Tartar general had fled 
to join a camp of 20,000 men assembled near Fort Lin. A 
Frenchman had been found outside a Canton shop skinned. 
The whole of the ninety-six villages were ready to march 
upon the invaders, A massacre of the English in Canton 
was in active preparation. The hlochade was taken off I 
This last was the all absorbing " shave." The island was 



KAISING THE BLOCKADE. 353 

immediately divided into two parties, who argued the ques- 
tion entirely upon public grounds. It was amusing to one 
a little behind the scenes to hear these disinterested and 
patriotic discussions. You never would have imagined that 
the disputants had any personal interest in the matter. Yet 
it does so happen that some of the European houses have been 
buying large quantities of teas at high prices in the north, 
reckoning upon the continued suspension of the southern 
trade ; and it generally occurs that the representatives of 
these houses think the Chinese ought to be punished by 
keeping wp the blockade until they have learnt that we can 
do w^ithout the commerce of Canton. On the other hand, 
those Americans who have intimate relations with the 
Chinese, and people who could not run the risk of buying 
teas in the north at their present prices, are struck with 
the gross cruelty of stopping the poor Chinaman's com- 
merce in his own river. They never hint that they hope to 
buy ll.OOOjOOOlbs. of teas at lower prices as soon as the 
river is open. The hope may be illusory, but it is a chance 
which costs them nothing. 

The leaders subsequently conferred upon this subject of 
raising the blockade. The consultation took place on Monday, 
the 25th, and the day determined upon is the 10th of next 
month. This mail will probably take home a coj)y of the 
proclamation about to be issued at Hongkong. We shall 
not get the Gazette here until the mail is gone. 

On the 21st I returned to my quarters in Canton, and 
found that all the tender solicitude of the people of Hong- 
kong had been entirely thrown away. I traversed the whole 
city with my trunk and chow-chow baskets, myself the only 
escort to my four coolies. Along the great east and west 
thoroughfare a closed shop was become a rare exception, and 
the only difficulty w^as to push our way through the crowed. 
The people were cutting up their pigs and their fish (the 
abundance of immense carp, tench, and roach in the streets 
of the city i< wonderful), and cooking their comestibles in 
full businesslike security. 

idlers were playing at Chinese hazard, and exhibiting 
their piles of coins upon the board. The curiosity-shops, in 
incredible numbers, were spread with curious antiques of the 

2 A 



354 CHINA. 

newest fasliions, and were victimising credulous lieutenants 
in a way which Mencius would not have approved. The 
crowds are not even afraid to manifest curiosity at the clothes 
and features of their European guests, and the shopkeepers 
invite you into their shops with a politeness that proves they 
iiave no misgiving that you will exercise any right of con- 
quest except a conquest by purchase. Yet the spirit of 
insolence has departed out of them. Neither in word nor 
gesture is there any symptom of hostility or even of dislike. 
I have seen two people frightened very much by a scolding 
for using the v/ord ^^ fan-queV' (foreign devil'); but I believe 
they used it in all innocence, having never heard us called 
by any other name. I would neglect no precautions, for the 
neglect of precautions would revive hopes now abandoned, 
and the neglect of precautions nearly proved our destruction 
at Ningpo during the last war ; but, so far from there being 
any notion of retaking this city, I believe that no ten 
Chinamen within sight of Canton Avould dare to raise a stick 
in the presence of a British or French soldier or sailor. 

The street of the triumphal arches is the only exception 
to the general reopening movement. That street lay rather 
in the way of the Phlegethoris fire, and the lower part of it 
has suffered severely. The Chinese are engaged in clearing 
aw^ay the rubbish, to rebuild their burnt houses, but the 
uninjured shops near the treasury still remain sulkily closed. 
In the large western suburb, where the streets and shops 
are quite as good as in the city, not a shot fell, and business 
goes on as usual. 

The commercial parts of Canton have been much over- 
estimated. We have believed that there must be some grain 
of truth in the bombast and brag of the Chinamen. Canton 
is big and populous ; that is all. In other respects it is a 
very ordinary Chinese aiij. Its temples are numerous, and the 
Confucian temple and the temple of the Five Hundred Gods 
are good of their kind, but most of the others are miserable 
and dilapidated. The nine-storied pagoda is in so ruinous a 
condition that the general the other day forbade the attempt 
to climb the fragments of its broken staircase. Major Luard, 
whose success at the escalade seems to have inspired him 
with a mania for climbing, had previously risked his neck in 



THE NINE-STORIED PAGODA. 355 

getting some way up. Yet tins pagoda is the great hoast and 
lion of Canton, The Chinese boasted of it because foreigners 
could not get near enough to see what a miserable ruin it 
is. What can we think of a people who will not afford a 
few dollars to save their monuments from mouldering? 
When the general and his party went to the pagoda it had all 
the air of not having been opened for twenty years. I have 
already spoken of that great district of desolation, the Tartar 
general's yamun. Hundreds of coolies are now papering 
and whitewashing, carpenters are shoring up, and, I 
believe, even painters are painting. It is thought that when 
the jungle is cleared away, and the roofs and floors are 
secured, and the bats driven out, and the atmosphere 
sweetened, it will become good barracks, and that the sur- 
rounding grounds will become — what I innocently described 
them as being, when I spoke of them on Chinese testimony 
— capital camping ground for British grenadiers. 

How different are all the realities of Chinese life from 
our English notions of oriental magnificence ! Their 
ridiculous mandarins live in houses in which an English 
gentleman would be ashamed to lodge his steward, and keep 
their retainers in places which an English farmer would think 
quite unworthy of his cows. It is explained that they allow 
their vast yamuns to fall to decay because their tenure of 
office seldom exceeds three years ; their luxuries, therefore, 
a,re fur dresses, embroidered tunics, jadestone sceptres, loose 
silk chair-covers, and such like movables. 

I found the yamun of Peh-Kwei in a much more busy 
state than when I left it. I shall not forget the sensations 
of our first night in that place, when we were suddenly left 
alone at sundown, with fifty men, in that unknown Babylon 
of interminable pavilions, without light, or guide, or pov/er 
of speech. Fancy fifty foreigners left in the dark in Vaux- 
hall-gardens, tv/o days after London had been stormed, 
groping about the rotunda and the Alhambra and the side boxes 
for places where they might sleep secure from a night attack. 
It was not encouraging, that when two of us penetrated to 
Peh-Kwei's buildings, to demand oil and tallow, a hundred 
fellows, headed by Peh-Kwei and his guest the Tartar 
general, stormed at us in chorus, and twice pressed us out by 
2 A 2 



356 CHINA. 

the iinhostile pressure of their bodies against ours before we 
could make ourselves understood sufficiently to levy a pound 
of candles as tlie price of peace and quietness. 

Now all this is entirely changed. Through the open 
yamun. doors crowds of Chinese come and go. The Chinese 
tribunal of Peh-Kwei and the tribunal of the three com- 
missioners (Colonel Holloway, le Captaine Martineau, and 
Mr. Parkes) are aux ideiits soins. Thanks to the energy of 
the triumvirs, the streets of Canton are as safe from Euro- 
pean violence as the streets of Paris are from Chinese ex- 
actions. Colonel Holloway's court takes all the mixed cases ; 
and, finding the other day that a Chinaman was in the 
wrong, he was sent over to Peh-Kwei with a statement of 
the circumstances. The mandarin was so charmed with this 
compliment that he had the poor wretch bambooed nearly to 
death. 

The new court has also established a new Canton police. 
Captain Pym is the Colonel Rowan of Canton. He has a 
hundred soldiers under him armed with swords and revolvers, 
and the French have a separate body of thirty men. Associated 
with the European police are an equal number of Tartars. 
Five English and two French stations have been estab- 
lished in convenient parts of the city and suburbs, and. 
the shopkeeping community are likely to obtain, under 
British and French rule, a security they never before 
hoped for. 

Things were proceeding so happily that Peh-Kwei the 
other day wrote a note to Lord Elgin, complimenting him 
very much upon the state of afiairs, and suggesting that 
we were all now such very good friends that it was quite 
unnecessary for us to keep soldiers in the city. Thia 
polite impertinence produced an answer which Peh-Kwei 
has not yet shown to his most intimate advisers. Instead 
of evacuating the city the general has been obliged to re- 
mind the Tartar general of a stipulation that the arms 
of the Tartar soldiery should be given up. The Chinese 
dignitaries were prepared to correspond upon this subject, to 
appoint commissioners, to receive reports, and to hold a dis- 
cussion upon every gingal. The English general, with a 
barbaric promptitude, marched 1,200 coolies and a large 



THE DEPOTS OF ARMS. 357 

escort into the three great depots, and on Saturday last 
lodged nearly all the rubbish within the English lines. The 
three imperial armouries were in a high state of efficiency. 
The double-handed swords were immense in numbers and 
terrible to look upon. There were rooms full of those fear- 
inspiring shields, which, in some quite modern period of 
Chinese history, probably gave to some piratical Greek the 
idea of the shield of Minerva. There were arrows in 
thousands, very carefully finished and preserved in cases, but 
the mandarin bows were very rare. Great store of quilted 
war-jackets filled the presses, and there were many com- 
plete suits of Chinese armour. The swords, and pikes, and 
gingals, and matchlocks were innumerable ; but the chief 
attraction was five brass guns, w^hich were followed by 
covetous eyes as they were walked off by the coolies. Iii 
another establishment we found collected all the shot that- 
could be recovered after the last year's bombardment, and 
also some unexploded shells, which had been fired upon the 
city on the 28th December. There was also a great depot 
of infernal machines in form like a dark lantern made of 
tin ; many flags and banners were also carried off. 

I have taken some pains to ascertain the loss suffered by 
the Chinese during the bombardment and the storm. We 
have all the official returns of the first day in our possession, 
and no account that I have seen places the deaths during the 
whole operations higher than two hundred. Some distrust 
the Chinese accounts, but I am inclined to put faith in them. 
Unless you surround Chinese soldiers you never kill many 
of them. You never catch them upon an island or in an 
isolated position. They act upon the principle of the wife 
oi Bath, that — 

" A mouse who trusts to one poor hole 
Can never be a mouse of any soul." 

They fire very fiercely upon jou as you are coming up to- 
attack them, but escape by the back door as soon as you get 
too near. Our escalade was a complete surprise upon them. 
They fancied we were advancing under the fire from their 
walls to attack Fort Gough ; they never expected that we 
should turn aside and "jump upon wooden legs" over the 



358 CHINA. 

Avail. Howqim's comprador, with whom some of ns talked 
the matter over, declares that it is impossible that the 
numbers killed could be greater than is stated. The people, 
he says, knew perfectly well the line the fire would take, 
and got out of the way. The troops who were obliged to 
remain on the walls kept very much under cover, and great 
quantities of the missiles missed the wall and fell into the 
ditch. The dead must be buried outside the city, and, as 
the western gate only was open, it was easy for any one to 
calculate how many were carried out. It says little for the 
destructive power of our warlike engines that so small a 
loss should have been occasioned by so large an expenditure 
of shot and shell ; but the probabilities are that the fact is 
as the Chinese state it. It is placed beyond doubt now that 
the loss of the Chinese during the bombardment in 1856 
was not more than forty-three, and I quite believe in the 
probability that the recent list of killed does not exceed two 
hundred. 

The staff arrangements have undergone some change. 
The last accounts from India showing that Major Crealock's 
regiment was actively engaged, he resigned his staff appoint- 
ment here, and is gone off to his regimental duty. Captain 
Pellew, the general's aide-de-camp, has pursued the same 
course. Captain Cooke, of the marines, succeeds Major 
Crealock, and Captain Carrington, who has hitherto acted 
as provost-marshal, has been removed to the adjutant- 
general's department. The general has not yet chosen an 
aide-de-camp to succeed Captain Pellew. 

Our great want is interpreters. It would appear that 
there are only three English interpreters available for our 
use in all China. Mr. Wade and Mr. Parkes are worked 
beyond all reason, and, what is more to the purpose, they 
toil in vain to overtake the exigencies of the public service. 
Mr. Alabaster, a young man of some acquirements in Chinese, 
is in attendance upon Yeh. There is a Chinaman named 
Wang, and a Portuguese named Lozario. These are the 
Only mouths through which v/e can communicate with this 
people. All the other Chinese scholars are, I suppose, 
engaged in their consular or their missionary labours. Where 
.are the " students " who were sent out v/ith a salary to learn 



OUrv INTERPPvETEES. 359 

Cliinese 1 Some say the experiment is yet so young that 
they have not had time to learn ; others affirm that they are 
taken from their studies to do clerks' duties as soon as they 
arrive in China, and therefore never will have time to learn ; 
and there are those who sav that, notwithstandinf? the King's 
College examinations, the choice is made with so little dis- 
crimination as to aptitude for learning languages that they 
never can learn. As to the cause I am not confident, but 
the effect is certain — they are not available in any number 
proportionate to the demand for their services. 

Where are the interpreters who were to be supplied by 
the Bishops' College, an institution that I believe has for 
some years received £250 annually for this purpose 1 It 
has never yet turned out one Chinese scholar. In the desti- 
tution which exists, I understand that some of the pupils of 
this college have been employed to interpret in the police- 
court. I can testify that their performances are most dis- 
tressing to witness. .A question from a magistrate is folio w^ed 
by a five minutes' wrangle between the interpreter and the 
witness or prisoner. I am told that their Chinese has 
the greatest possible degree of remoteness from resemblance 
to Mr. Daviess English, and it would certainly puzzle a 
jury of sphinxes to understand the English they extract from 
Chinese. 

If we are to have an extensive intercourse with China we 
must have a large staff of interpreters, who should be confined 
to their duties as interpreters. It is not Chinese scholars, 
armed with consular and official power, which we went. With 
very great respect, and with very great personal regard for 
several of these men, whose honour is pure even in the eyes of 
Chinamen, and whose scholarship and zeal are worthy of all 
admiration, I must yet not shrink from the public duty of de- 
claring that to them we owe nearly all the difficulties that beset 
our path in China. They have spent their lives in learning, not 
only the Chinese language, but also the elaborate Chinese 
ceremonial. By concentrating all their pov^'ers of mind upon 
these fripperies they are come to regard them with even, 
more reverence tlian they are regarded by the Chinese them- 
selves. Therefore they see insults, and they see difficulties, 
and they see impossibilities, where an Englishman, acting by 



360 CHINA. 

the light of his own common sense, would see no insult and 
find no obstacle. They venerate footeis and toutaes as 
tremendous nobles, with whom it is glorious to contend on 
points of etiquette. Whether there shall be a break in the 
line of a written communication is a question of the gravest 
importance. To coerce some obese old opium-smoker of in- 
famous morals and intense ignorance into a tacit admission of 
equality is a victory. To make a reluctant coolie render to 
them the respect which he pays to the humblest of his man- 
darins is a point of great moment, but never attained except 
while the coolie's ears are hot with the recent application of 
an Anglo-Saxon palm. All this only strengthens tlie 
Chinaman's conviction that we are very pitiable barbarians. 
He sees us apeing his own ceremonials, and while he laughs 
at our awkwardness he is indignant at our presumption. If 
our interpreters were to pass their days in hissing against a 
flock of geese or braying against a drove of donkeys, these 
animals would soon come to regard their imperfect imitators 
with contempt, and probably believe them to be an inferior 
order of creatures. 

The course to pursue in China is this — dare to act 
honestly with them, and dare to tell them the truth ; say to 
them that the nations of the civilized world regard them as 
a barbarous, or, at least, as a semi-civilized people ; that our 
laws recognize no rank but that we derive from our own 
sovereign ; that in dealing with foreign officers we regard 
nothing but their acts, and desire only to be assured that 
those acts are within the scope of their authority ; that to 
us all foreign officers are of equal rank — that is, of no 
English rank whatever ; and that knowing, and desiring to 
know, nothing of Chinese ceremonial, no observance can do 
us honour, and no lack of it can disgrace us. Correspond 
with them m English ; and, if their answers should be dis- 
courteous in form, pass over the intended insult with the 
remark that " we are informed that the letter is written 
in bad Chinese ; but that it is no part of our business to 
insist that a Chinese secretary should be an educated man*, 
or versed in the courtesies of civilized nations." 

This course of action would get rid of nine tenths of our 
difficulties in this country. The Chinese would declare at 



HOW TO DEAL WITH THE CHINESE. 361 

first tliat they do not nuderstand our letters — although 
Yell's papers contain daily reports of the contents of the 
Hongkong papers, and translations of extracts from the 
Times. Our own interpreters will exclaim against the idea 
as preposterous ; but we are accustomed to see their pro- 
phecies fail. Firmly carried out, I believe this plain, open, 
truthful course would succeed. Sure I am, from all I see 
around me, that nothing can be v/orse than that we have 
hitherto pursued. 

This line of policy would by no means decrease the neces- 
sity for interpreters, and I draw attention to the fact that 
the public service is in this particular in an unsatisfactory 
state. The Chinese, who have all the instincts of trade, are 
moving to satisfy the want on their side. The chief thorough- 
fares in this city abound in bookstalls ; and the last new 
work, " which is in everybody's hands," and " without which 
no libiary is complete," is a small tract- teaching the Enghsli 
numerals and a few. phrases — the sounds being imitated in 
Chinese characters. People are reading this in ail directions. 
I saw a lame beggar lying under the eaves of a house and 
assiduouslv learniniy to besr in Ensjlish. 

A, o o o 

These Chinese beggars are the most importunate creatures 
of their kind. They are not quite so numerous as those of 
Naples, but they are even more pertinacious, and their sores 
and leprosies are more disgusting. It is a scandal to a city 
with a score of miles of rich shops that so much misery 
should exist unchecked. In all other Chinese cities I have 
found some benevolent institution which distributes rice and 
medicine. "We have not been able to discover any such 
establishment in action in Canton. Mr. Huliatt, our 
chaplain, who performs divine service in this pagan yanum, 
and exhorts our men in soldierlike discourses that ring like 
Christianized versions of a speech from Thucydides, has taken 
this matter in hand. He has established a Chinese hospital 
and soup-kitchen — supported by contributions from the 
scanty pay of the army. I cannot say I think the poor of 
Canton have any strong claims upon English charity, but if 
any of those eccentric Englishmen who feel the wrongs of 
the Chinese to press upon their consciences choose to send 
a subscription, he will be glad to receive it. 



362 CHINA. 

There are funds which might be fairly made available 
for these purposes. Some days since a poor priest presented 
himself at head-quarters in abject garb and squalid plight, 
and told a piteous tale to the general how his little personal 
property and his only change of I'aiment lay in the monastery 
of Celestial Bliss, now occupied by Colonel Hocker and 
his battalion. The general at once gave him an order to 
remove all his property from the place, and the priest 
prudently waited till the colonel and the major part of his 
officers and men were absent on a reconnaissance. He then 
presented his order, and was led about by the officers of the 
day to recognize his property. The poor priest v/as accom- 
panied by some servitors of his order. With their assistance 
he opened the pedestal of an untouched idol, and lo ! a bar 
of solid gold and several bars of silver were exposed to the 
view of the astonished soldiery. Proceeding to another 
image, he abstracted some stones of great magnitude and 
price. Then he borrowed a ladder, afld, mounting to the 
roof, removed a sheathing, and behold ! a magazine of richly 
embroidered silks and costly furs, all which were duly piled 
upon the shoulders of the poor brethren. The guard were 
almost frantic, but the order was imperative. The poor priest 
was a true Chinaman. Having succeeded so far, he pushed 
his rights to the utmost. Lying about were some trophies 
and small matters which the absent soldiers had gathered 
together in other places and brought to these quarters. 
These also were put together. All was carried oft ; and when 
the reconnoitring party returned to their quarters they found 
them swept, but not garnished. Nothing was left but the 
hole in the roof and the disembov/elled joss. 

Peh-kwei has been asked to take some steps towards 
alleviating the misery of the destitute classes ; but he does 
not see his way to the employment of any less efficacious 
methods than the head-cutting knife and the bamboo. The 
life of these high dignitaries must be very dull. Peh-kwei 
is too great a man to do anything. He sits all day in an 
uncomfortable straight-backed chair, and receives a few 
reports and writes occasionally— or rather dictates, for his 
handwriting is unpresentable — to the emperor. Seeing him 
the other day in this position of dignified discomfort, one of 



HIDDEX TREASUEE. 363 

the interpreters asked him whether he passed much of his 
time ill reading. His answer was, ' No, I never read ; my 
heart is heavy. I cannot laugh over romances, and if I read 
good books I go to sleep.' 

Yeh, on board the Injlexible, exhibits much the same 
spectacle ; and it naturally occurred to the Anglo-Saxon 
mind that he also must want books. The offer w^as rejected ; 
but Yeh is a religious man, and said nothing about romances. 
His answer 'was, 'What should I do with books? All the 
books that are proper to be read I know by heart' — he 
quoted Caliph Omar without having ever heard his name. 
He passes his time in praying to Buddha and telling his 
fortune. His jDapers abound in fortune-telling schemes, 
analogous to our ' sortes Virgiliance ' or ' sortes Biblicce.^ One 
of them is headed, ' Scheme to determine when the K^vangsi 
[Rebellion will Terminate.' The Chinese are very indignant 
with him for not killing himself. They say, ' Eep number 
one fools ; he no make writee pigeon, he no make fightee 
pigeon ; he number one bad mandalin ; he no cuttee thloat.' 
The wretched creature seems to have been influenced in his 
conduct by these fortune-telling tricks, which are as hetero- 
dox in China as they are in England. Respice rivales 
divorum I Yet, although the revelations of his state papers, 
and our observation of his personal habits, demonstrate that 
he is without conduct or judgment,"' or even the strong 
common sense of an ordinary Chinaman, his official rank is 
so great that we are told his presence in the Canton river 
exercises an unfavourable influence upon our dealings with 
the Chinese people. Unless early news of his degradation 
should be received, he will be sent away. The present idea 
is to send him to Calcutta, where he will probably have an 
opportunity of cultivating the friendship of the king of 
Oude within the walls of Eort William. 

* The reader will find this estimate of Yell's character much modified 
hereafter. 



364: 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A WALK ABOUT CANTON. 

Intricacies of Canton City — The Governor's Yamun — The Commis- 
sioner's Court — The Tartar Yamun — The Treasur}' — The Execution 
Ground — Manner of the Executions — The Ruins of Yeh's Yamun — 
The Site of the Old Factories— Temples— The Tartar City— The 
Eatee Gardens — Puntiuqua's House. 

Canton, Feb. 15. 

I AM weaiy of walking tlie slippery alleys of Canton. Six 
weeks here liave rendered us all familiar with every object 
of interest. Not that we know our way about. The in- 
habitants, when they go far abroad, often carry a fan with a 
plan of the city upon it ; and wise mandarins sometimes 
have a Chinese compass in their chairs. Even the few main 
thoroughfares are not easily to be recognized if you come 
into them unawares, the streets so much resemble each other 
in their narrowness, their pendant signboards, their drifting 
crowds, and their lines of shops. If you take a Chinese 
guide from the east he does not know the west. We are 
about to name the principal thoroughfares, and to put up 
boards in English, French, and Chinese, for the benefit of 
future tourists ; but at present Canton is not a city easy to 
be learned by heart. 

We sleep — that is to say, four of us sleep — in a building 
very like a cucumber-frame without any glass. It is true 
that the absence of glass has been supposed to be supplied 
by the presence of gauze paper ; but, as nearly every pane 
is torn, the north wind, which whistles shrewdly at night, 
finds means of bringing us a morning supply of colds. Let 
me endeavour to tell how some of us, who may happen not 
to be on duty, sometimes pass our days. 

After comfortable ablutions in the abundant v/arm waters 
of this yamun, for the water is positively warm as it comes 



THE commissioners' COURT. 3G5 

from the v/ells, and after a campaigning breakfast, we sally- 
forth armed with revolvers and stout walliing- sticks. The com- 
missioners' court in the outer quadrangle is already sitting. 
The three commissioners, in their square open pavilion, are 
trying a rape case ; and hundreds of Chinese, an orderly 
crowd, are looking on. The culprit is a fresh-coloured Irish 
boy, of the marine force, and the complainant is a little 
weazened old woman who totters upon her small sheeps' 
feet, and talks voluble Cantonese against the erect young 
soldier. The English police corroborate her story. I am 
afraid there can be no doubt about the fact. The boy was 
drunk and indiscriminating. He had offered violence to that 
quaint creature. He is found guilty, and fifty lashes write 
in red letters upon his back the Cantonese commissioners' 
version of the axiom, " si non caste, tamen caute" 

The open space in front of the governor's yamun is more 
than an acre in area, and abuts upon the Great East and 
West-streets. We no longer call it "the street of Benevo- 
lence and Love." Perhaps we go westward, and, pushing 
through the crowd, and averting our eyes from the too 
tempting curiosity shops, we arrive at the gates of the 
Tartar yamun, with its two colossal marble lions in front. 
I haA'-e already spoken of this place as a scene of desolation. 
It is rapidly returning to its former grandeur. In an in- 
credibly short space of time the Chinese workmen, set in 
motion by barbarian dollars, have repapered all the walls, 
botched up all the holes, and, mowing ways through the 
bamboo jungle, have discovered little nooks wdth terraces 
and small bridges, and curious pavilions — gentle accessories 
to the mighty halls which are to form the quarters of the 
forces. The French are taking great pains to restore the 
portions they have chosen. Le Capitaine Martineau has his 
private rooms, his chapel, his prison, and his office. A few 
dashes of the paintbrush do wonders in a Chinese building. 
The Tartar yamun will soon look as imposing as it did when 
it was the palace of the southern king of China. The 
wilderness in its rear, with its central temple and its ancient 
trees, will be again a pleasant park. It is sixty acres. We 
flushed a woodcock there during a recent walk. 

If we retrace our steps and pass again eastwards we shall 



56 b CHINA. 

revisit the other great official yamuns. Twenty times may 
we go about these great straggling places before we become 
aware of all their walls contain. Behind the treasury, the 
portals whereof seem to be in the centre of an overpeopled 
neighbourhood, I have counted thirty head of deer, their 
horny appearing and disappearing in the coarse bamboo 
jimgle. There are not five men beside m3^self v/ho know 
that this miniature deer-forest exists in Canton city, or, 
despite the provost-marshal, venison would not be so un- 
known in our quarters. These little wildernesses will, 
doubtless, soon be cleared ; and before we leave they will 
become parade-grounds, or, jierhaps, encampments ; but it 
shows how little our English residents know of what is just 
an inch beyond their noses, that they, in their northern 
newspaper, made pert merriment of my early statement that 
there were park-like grounds within the circuit of the 
Canton walls. Our rambles are, however, mere usually 
among the intricately reticulated streets. As we make our 
"way towards the south-west, by aid of our Chinese compass, 
we pass guests proceeding to a marriage, with the wedding 
presents in long procession behind their chairs — whole- 
roasted pigs, cakes, and confitures, and baskets whose con- 
tents w^e can only guess at. Perhaps — it has happened more 
than once — there is a terrific sound of rapid wheels. There 
is an alarm of fire ; and the fire-brigade, in their uniform 
caps, are dragging a fire-engine along the pavement of black 
granite at a tremendous pace. These firemen are fine 
fellows. In the heat of our bombardment we saw them 
working their engines under fire, and once at least we blew 
up engine and firemen together, by a shell. As we near the 
southern parts, passing under the wall of the old city, we 
come upon lower neighbourhoods, and the shops are adapted 
to the wants of the waterside population. Here (if you 
observe curiously the shops which are filled with the sun- 
dried comestibles the Chinese love) you may find dried rats 
with their tails fully projected, and leaving no doubt of their 
class and order in creation. Look carefully into that finely- 
brovN^ned roast pig and you will discover it to be a dog. 
Puppies are also borne by in open wicker baskets, and their 
fate and ultimate destination are not ambiguous. But these 



THE EXECUTIOiJ GROU]S^D. 367 

peculiarities are not common, and are not ostentatiously 
displayed. You must have an old habitue of the factories 
with you, or you would not discover them. The rats are 
field ra,ts, cauo;ht and dried after harvest, and the doos have 
heen carefully fed upon rice and meal. We do the Chinese 
much wrong in the matter of their food. Their pork is far 
more white and delicate in flavour than the pork we see 
exposed in London, and it is fed with a care and cleanliness 
from which some English dairies might well take pattern. 

Threading our way, under the guidance of some experienced 
friend, we come to a carpenter's shop, fronting the entrance 
to a small potter's field. It is not a rood in area, of an 
irregular shape, resembling most an oblong. A row of 
cottages open into it on one side ; there is a wall on the 
other. The ground is covered with half-baked pottery ; 
there are two wooden crosses formed of unbarked wood, 
standing in an angle, with a shred of rotting rope hanging 
from one of them". There is nothing to fix the attention in 
this small enclosure, except that you stumble against a 
human skull now and then as you walk along it. This is 
the Aceldama, the field of blood, the execution-ground of 
Canton. The upper part of that carpenter's shojo is the place 
where nearly all the European residents have, at the price 
of a dollar each, witnessed the wholesale massacres of which 
Europe has heard with a hesitating scepticism. It was 
within this yard that the monster Yeh has within two years 
destroyed the life of 70,000 fellovf- beings. These crosses 
are the instruments to which those victims were tied who 
were condemned to the special torture of being sliced to 
death. Upon one of these the wife of a rebel general was 
stretched, and by Yeh's orders her flesh was cut from her 
body. After the battle at Whampoa the rebel leader 
escaped, but his wife fell into the hands of Yeh — that was 
how he treated his prisoner. Her breasts were first cut off, 
then her forehead was slashed and the skin torn down over 
the face, then the fleshy parts of the body were sliced away. 
There are Englishmen yet alive who saw this done, but at 
what period of the butchery sensation ceased and death 
came to this poor innocent woman, none can tell. The frag- 
ment of rope which now hangs to one of the crosses was 



368 CHINA. 

used to bind a woraan who was cut up for murdering hev 
husband. The sickening details of the massacres perpetrated 
on this spot have been related to me by those who,have seen 
them, and who take shame to themselves while they confess 
that after witnessing one execution by cutting on the cross, 
the rapidity and dexterity with which the mere beheading 
was done, deprived the execution of a hundred men of half 
its horror. The criminals were brought down in gangs, if 
they could walk, or brought down in chairs and shot out 
into the yard. The executioners then arranged them in 
rows, giving them a blow behind which forced out the head 
and neck and laid them convenient for the stroke. Then 
came the warrant of death. It is a banner. As soon as it 
waved in sight, without verbal order given, the work began. 
There was a rapid succession of dull crunching sounds — chop, 
chop, chop, chop. No second blow was ever dealt, for the 
dexterous man-slayers are educated to their work ; until 
they can, with their heavy swords, slice a great bulbous vege- 
table as thin as we slice a cucumber, they are not eligible 
for their office. Three seconds a head suffice. In one 
minute five executioners clear off a hundred lives. It takes 
rather longer for the assistants to cram the bodies into rough 
coffins, especially as you might see them cramming two into 
one shell, that they might embezzle the spare wooden box. 
The heads were carried off in boxes ; the saturated earth was 
of value as manure. 

Leaving the execution-ground, and re-entering the city, 
we reach, at a distance of about two hundred yards, a square 
space, wherein are the stumps of two mandarin poles cut short 
by cannon-shot, and two stone lions, with very peculiarly shaped 
heads and ridiculous sharp noses. One side of the square is 
occupied by the painted gates and outer buildings of a 
yamun. This is all that remains standing of the palace of 
the governor-general. Injside those gates you find nothing 
but two acres of brick rubbish. Of the courts and pavilions 
I looked down upon from the maintop of the Nimrod not a 
vestige remains. The cannon of the ships knocked the 
place down, and even while the firing still continued the popu- 
lace of this low neighbourhood rushed in and carried away 
every scrap, not only of furniture or ornament, but of wood or 



KUINS OF YEH S PALACE. 369 

stone. They bore off the beams, the window frames, the 
wooden columns, amid storms of round shot and shrapnell 
shell, and left nothing bat the mounds of brick and mortar, 
and the fragments of wall which we see. There is iioi,hing 
like a Chinese mob for utter destruction. 

Repassing the southern wall, and pursuing our course 
westward, we penetrate through devious lanes (not more 
dirty, perhaps, than some of our own waterside purlieus) to 
the ruins of those hongs which were knocked down by the 
English when they were compelled to retreat from Canton. 
Howqua's house is among the fallen, and so are the hongs of 
many other '- quas," who, while making enormous fortunes 
from our trade, exulted in being conspicuous as barbarian- 
haters, earning their peacocks' tails by sitting on the com- 
mittee of war, and paying premiums for murdering and kid- 
napping our people. 

When the real danger came all this boasting canaille re- 
tired into the western suburb, whither they were well 
informed by their English and American friends that no fire 
would be directed. 

Passing these ruins, and crossing a little creek upon a 
temporary bridge made of scaling ladders and planks, we 
come upon the site of the dear old factories. It is now an 
open space, several acres in extent, and covered only by little 
hillocks of prostrate bricks and trampled mortar. Not six 
inches of wall is left standing, not an inch of wood lies 
undiscovered. Only, as if to show that while barbarian foun- 
dations are transitory Chinese institutions are eternal, the 
solid pavement of Hog-lane continues. The church which 
once stopped the path has disappeared, but lines of coolies 
are carrying their burdens along Hog-lane and crowds of 
sanpans ply at the landing-place at which it terminates. 

In small stalls near at hand you may buy English books 
and odd articles of European use. A sailor recently bought 
a Sevres vase, fully believing it to be a Chinese antique ; all 
this is, of course, loot from the factories. Its exhibition, 
under present circumstances, is only an ordinary instance of 
Chinese impudence. 

If we now turn northwards we shall get into some of the 
best streets of the western suburb, where every shop is like 

2 B 



370 CHINA. 

a little joss-liouse, and where silks, and embroideries, and 
jadestone ornaments, and heavy, ugly, ill-made Chinese 
furniture, and perfumeries, and other luxuries, are set forth 
in the highest flight of Chinese taste. You may go for a 
mile northward in a straight line. If you deviate to the 
.eft, you will probably want your pocket comj)ass to get back 
again, for you will quickly be involved in the Belgravia of 
Canton — narrow, quiet streets, with windowless brick walls 
and small doorways that give no notice that the best private 
houses in Canton lie behind. We may now visit the '• Temple 
of the Five Hundred Gods " without danger of being stoned, as 
Sir John Bo wring once was when he ventured there ; and you 
may even see the " Temple of Longevity," with its kitchen 
gardens and ornamental grounds. Having rambled our full 
in the western suburb, and lunched on tea and cakes, per- 
haps at Howqua's (if you have a merchant likely to buy tea 
in your party), or if not, then at one of the many tea-houses — 
you may return into the city by the south-western-gate, and 
proceed eastwards to the temple set apart for the adoration 
of the emperor — a series of courts and tabernacles which, 
although just under the wall, is not much injured by our fire. 
Thence trend away to the north-west, and you will cross the 
Tartar city and look up at the Mahommedan pagoda, claimed 
to be a great Arab antiquity. Continue in the same line 
and you will at last reach the nine-storied pagoda where the 
priests will chin-chin you and be very civil. Pass thence 
along the front of the Tartar yamim, to the yamun of the 
governor. You will then have done twelve hours' hard 
walking, and v/ill be quite ready to join any one of the 
hospitable messes whereat British and French of&cers discuss 
savoury stews in different nooks of that celestial edifice. 
Another day may well be devoted to the river. You will 
go up the crowded Fatee Creek and land at the gardens — 
some two or three acres of nursery ground — where you will 
see thousands of rare trees in pots, dwarfed and distorted 
into grotesque imitations of dogs and deer, and dragons and 
vases, and birdcages. There are also mandarin orange trees, 
beautiful camellias, and other flowers whose names I know 
not — but all in pots and all for sale. You will visit also Pun- 
tinqua's house and gardens — sixty acres of fishponds, pavi- 



CANTON PRISONS. 371 

lions, bridges, and aviaries, witli painted barges, pretty 
flowers, cool stone seats, and every preparation for summer 
indolence — the whole dominated by a white pagoda, whence 
you have a complete view. 

Having seen all this, joii will not have seen one tenth part 
of Canton, but you will have seen all I dare to indicate of a 
general character, for I must not forget that I am not 
writing a Chinese itinerary, and my only excuse for saying 
what I have said is, that Canton is a virgin city, and some 
description of it is, strictly speaking, neivs. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE CANTON PRISONS. 

Peh-kwei's Proclamation — Description of a Chinese Prison — The Yard 
of the Second Prison — Horrible Scene in one of the surroundiag 
Dens — The Paralyzed Child — The European Prison — Description — 
Traditions of the Prison — Death by Poison — Lord Elgin's Inter- 
ference — Prison Book-keeping. 

Two days were occupied in visiting the prisons. A pro- 
clamation had been extorted from Peh-kwei, giving general 
amnesty to all who were amenable to punishment for having- 
held commerce with the foreigners. It was the duty of the 
three allied commissioners to ascertain that this amnesty 
was fully carried out. In the first prison we found a Por- 
tuguese boy, a Portuguese man, and the coolie who had acted 
as verger at the church attached to the factories. At the 
end of our second day's labour we returned to the yamun 
with fifty prisoners and two mandarins — head gaolers — in 
our custody. 

I approach with reluctance the task of telling what we 
saw in these places, and shall dismiss the topic as briefly as I 
can. It is not, however, sufficient to say that all the inmates 
were squalid and half-starved, swarming with vermin and 
covered with skin diseases. This condition is common to 
all the Canton gaols, and to all their inmates. But there are 
2 B 2 



372 CHINA. 

horrors wliicli one mind cannot convey to another, and sucli 
we saw again and again during those two days. 

A Chinese gaol is a group of small yards enclosed by no 
general outer wall (except in one instance). Around each 
yard are dens like the dens in which we confine wild beasts. 
The bars are not of iron, but of double rows of very thick 
"c^mboo, so close together that the interior is too dark to be 
readily seen into from without. The ordinary prisoners are 
allowed to remain in the yard during the day. Their ankles 
are fettered together by heavy rings of iron and a short 
chain, and they generally also wear similar fetters on their 
wrists. The low-roofed dens are so easily climbed that when 
the prisoners are let out into the yard the gaolers must trust 
to their fetters alone for security. The places all stank like 
the monkey -house of a menagerie. 

We were examining one of the yards of the second prison, 
and Lord Elgin, who is seldom absent when any work is 
doing, was one of the spectators. As it was broad daylight 
the dens were supposed to be empty. Some one thought 
he heard a low moan in one of them, and advanced to the 
bars to listen. He recoiled as if a blast from a furnace had 
rushed out upon him. Never were human senses assailed by 
a more horrible stream of pestilence. The gaolers were 
ordered to open that place, and refusing — as a Chinaman 
always at first refuses — were given over to the rough handling 
of the soldiers, who were told to make them. No sooner 
were hands laid upon the gaolers than the stifled moan 
became a wail, and the wail became a concourse of low 
weakly-muttered groans. So soon as the double doors could 
be opened several of us went into the place. The thick 
stench could only be endured for a moment, but the spectacle 
was not one to look long at. A corpse lay at the bottom of 
the den, the breasts, the only fleshy parts, gnawed and eaten 
a^ray hj rats. Around it and upon it was a festering mass 
of humanity, still alive. The mandarin gaoler, who seemed 
to wonder what all the excitement was about, was compelled 
to have the poor creatures drawn forth, and no man who saw- 
that sight will ever forget it. They were skeletons, not 
men. You could only believe that there was blood in their 
bodies by seeing it clotted upon their undressed wounds. As 



THE DEN OF HOERORS. 373 

they were borne out one after the other, and laid upon the 
pavement of the yard, each seemed more horrible than the 
last. 

They were too far gone to shriek, although the agony 
must have been great, the heavy irons pressing upon their 
raw, lank shins as the gaolers lugged them, not too tenderly, 
along. They had been beaten into this state, perhaps long 
ago, by the heavy bamboo, and had been thrown into this 
den to rot. Their crime was that they had attempted to 
escape. Hideous and loathsome, however, as was the sight 
of their foul wounds, their filthy rags, and their emaciated 
bodies, it was not so distressing as the indescribable expres- 
sion of their eyes ; the horror of that look of fierce agony 
fixed us like a fascination. As the dislocated wretches 
writhed upon the ground, tears rolled down the cheeks of 
the soldiers of the escort who stood in rank near them. A 
gigantic French sergeant, who had the little mandarin in 
custody, gesticulated with his bayonet so fiercely that we 
were afraid he would kill him. We did not then know that 
the single word which the poor creatures were trying to 
utter was " hunger," or that that dreadful starting of the 
eyeball was the look of famine. Some of them had been 
without food for four days. Water they had, for there was 
a well in the yard, and their fellow prisoners had supplied 
them, but cries for food were answered only by the bamboo. 
Alas ! it was not till the next morning that we found this 
out ; for although we took some away, we left others there 
that night. Since the commencement of this year fifteen 
men have died in that cell. Some of those who were stand- 
ing by me asked " How will you ever be able to tell this to 
the English people V I believe that no description could 
lead the imagination to a full conception of what we saw in 
that Canton prison. I have not attempted to do more than 
dot a faint outline of the truth, and when I have read what 
I have written, feel how feeble and forceless is the image 
upon paper when compared with the scene impressed upon 
my memory. 

This was the worst of the dens we opened, but there were 
many others which fell but few degrees below it in their 
horrors. There was not one of the 6,000 prisoners we saw 



374 CHINA. 

whose appearance before any assemblage of Englishmen 
would not have aroused cries of indignation. " Quelle societe" 
exclaimed Captain Martineau, as in the first yard we visited 
he saw a little boy, confined here because he was the son of 
a rebel — " quelle societe pour un enfant de quatorze ams I " 
Alas ! we saw many, many such cases in our after experience. 
In one of the dens of the Poon-yu, the door of which was 
open, some one pointed attention to a very child — rather an 
intelligent looking child — who was squat upon a board and 
laughing at the novel scene taking place before him. We 
beckoned to him, but he did not come. We went up to him, 
and found he could not move. His little legs were ironed 
together ; they had been so for several months, and were 
now paralyzed and useless. This child of ten years of age 
had been placed here charged with stealing from other 
children. We took him away. 

It was not until our second day's search that we were able 
to discover the prison in which Europeans had been confined. 
Threats, and a night in the guard-house, at last forced the 
discovery from the mandarin or gaol inspector in our custody. 
It is called the Koon Khan, is in the eastern part of the city, 
and is distiDguishable from the others only in that it is sur- 
rounded by a high brick wall. Nearly the whole of our 
second day was passed in this place. It has only one yard, 
and into this the prisoners are not allowed to come. There is 
a joss-house at one end of the court ; for, of course, the 
Chinese mix up their religion with their tyranny. The finest 
sentiments, such as " The misery of to-day may be the happi- 
ness of to-morrow ;" " Confess your crimes, and thank the 
magistrate who purges you of them;" "May we share in 
the mercy of the emperor," are carved in faded golden 
characters over every den of every prison. Opening from 
this yard are four rooms, each containing four dens. The 
hardest and most malignant face I ever saw is that of the 
chief gaoler of this prison. The prisoners could not be 
brought to look upon him, and when he was present could 
not be induced to say that he was a gaoler at all, or that 
they had ever seen him before. But when he was removed 
they always reiterated their first story, " The other gaolers 
only starve and ill-treat us, but that man eats our flesh."' 



THE PARALYZED CHILD. 375 

How, step by step, we followed up our inquiries, and Low 
we cast about hitlier and tbitber for a clue, and at last found 
one, wbicb was often lost and refound, would be too long to 
tell. Mr. Parkes conducted tbis business witli a vigour and 
intelligence tbat cannot be over-estimated. At first tbey 
bad never beard of a foreigner; tben a beavy box on tbe ears 
administered by one of tbe orderlies, in punitfbment for a 
tbreat to a prisoner, produced a recollection of one European 
prisoner. Tben. tbe gaolers were rougbly bandied in sigbt of 
tbe prisoners, and, togetber witli tbe mandarin, were taken 
out in custody of tbe soldiers. Gradually tbe prisoners began 
to give credence to wbat we said — tbat we were now tbe 
mandarins of Canton, and could protect tbem if tbey spoke 
out. One produced a monkey-jacket from bis sleeping-place 
at tbe back of tbe den; anotber bad an old jersey; all of 
tbem soon bad stories to tell. Many of tbe prisoners bad 
been inmates of tbe place for many years, and upon reference 
to tbe books we found tbat tbey were all originally placed 
bere for very trifling crimes. Old stories get mixed up witb 
new ; tbe difficulties of Cbinese dialects come into p]ay, and 
we often fancied we were unravelling some sanguinary 
iniquity of yesterday, wben we found at last tbat it was two 
or tbree, or even ten, years old. It is only by small degrees 
tbat tbe collated evidence of tbese vermin-bitten witnesses 
is m-ade to assume some form and consistency. It appears 
at last almost certain tbat six Cbinese were bebeaded last 
nigbt, tbeir fate being, in all probability, precipitated by our 
visit to tbe otber prisons. It also appears quite certain tbat, 
witbin a period dating from tbe commencement of tbe present 
troubles, six Europeans, two Frencbmen, and four Englisb- 
men, bave found tbeir deatb in tbese dreadful dens. Many 
different prisoners, examined separately, deposed to tbis fact, 
and almost to tbe same details. Tbe European victims were 
kept bere for several montbs, berding witb tbe Cbinese, 
eating of tbat same black mess of rice wbicb looks and smells 
like a bucket of grains cast fortb from a brewery. Wben 
tbeir time came — probably tbe time necessary for a reply 
from Pe]?:in — tbe gaoler beld tbeir beads back wbile poison 
was poured down tbeir tbroats. Tbe prisoners recollected 
two wbo tbrew up tbe poison — and tbey were strangled. We 



376 CHINA. 

asked how they knew it was poison. There was no doubt on 
this score. It is a curious circumstance, illustrative of the 
prostrate state of terror that exists here, that the gaoler's 
fowls scratch about, untouched, among all the famishing men 
within the Canton prisons, and feed upon the vermin. It 
was remarked that the fowls fed upon the vomit of these two 
Europeans, and died. 

Only two of these j^risoners had excited much sympathy 
among the Chinese. One of them was a sailor, who spoke 
the language, adapted himself to their habits, and told them 
stories. He was cheerful, or pretended to be cheerful, at 
first ; but in a short time he grew sick, and cried, and spoke 
of his friends far away. Even the Chinese were sorry when 
his time came, and when the gaolers poisoned him. There 
was another, an old white bearded man, who was there some 
months. He spoke only a few words of Chinese, but the 
Chinese veneration for age came to his aid, and they pitied 
him also. 

Some of us thought that this must have been poor Cooper, 
the owner of the docks at Wharapoa, who, probably mistaken 
for his son, was kidnapped from his chop boat, lying within a 
hundred yards of the Syhille. His wife and daughter were 
on board with him. A sanpan came alongside with a letter. 
While he leaned forward to take it he was drawn into the 
sanpan, and he was away up a creek before the alarm could 
be given and a boat lowered from the man-of-war. 

The others, we were told, were not favourites. They 
could not speak, they held themselves aloof. If two of them 
happened to be in prison at the same time they conversed 
together. If there was only one, he either fought with the 
gaolers or sat alone covering his face with his hands. 

It is, I suppose, contrary to our principle and our policy, 
and the custom of civilized nations when a city has been 
taken by assault, to punish these acts ; but we stretched a 
point. We carried away the principal gaoler and the secretary 
— two terrible ruffians, the head and the hand of this 
iniquity ; and we also carried away the prisoners who had 
given us trustworthy information, but we only took them as 
witnesses, and lodged them in our guard-house. 

On the night of the second day, the three commissioners 



THE CANTON PRISONS. 377 

sought an interview with Peh-kwei, gave him a hint of 
what they had discovered, and produced the fettered and 
paralyzed chijd to show that there were instances of un- 
necessary severity in the prisons under his control. The 
lieutenant-governor, far from being moved by this spectacle, 
flew, or affected to fly, into a towering passion ; Mr. Parkes 
was bent upon persecuting him (poor Peh-kwei !) ; what right 
had we in his prisons ? What was it to us how he dealt 
with his own people ? Were we prepared to open all the 
prisons in Canton ? It was breach of faith to go into those 
prisons without notice to him. He would write immediately 
to Lord Elgin — Mr. Parkes's manner was most discourteous 
— and so on. 

Meanwhile Lord Elgin had seen, and has acted. Peh- 
kwei has been told that where a Christian power has means 
to stop these things, they cannot be permitted. The China- 
man as usual blusters, exclaims that he is oppressed, and 
yields. A hospital is marked out, and the prisoners are to 
be visited. The prayers which our countrymen sent heaven- 
wards from those dungeons, that their countrymen might 
some day avenge them, will probably be unanswered ; but 
so long as we are in possession of Canton the Chinese them- 
selves will benefit by what we have seen. When we retire, 
things will of course resume their ordinary routine, for it is 
only by the present system that these prisons can be sup- 
ported. A Chinese magistrate obtains only a nominal salary, 
and he has to employ 1,000 sub-of&cials, and to make a large 
fortune in three years. This can only be done by extortion 
and starvation. 

Nothing can be more orderly than the books of these 
prisons, nothing can be more just and beneficent than the 
rules laid down for their governance. In some countries 
words represent facts, but this is never the case in China. 
The practice is as I have faintly sketched it. 

In dealing with this nation of fair words and foul deeds 
we are under great disadvantage. Howqua, and Singqua, 
and Imqua, and all the other merchant " quas " were in the 
committee of war, and cognizant of all that was doing in 
these prisons. "Committed by the committee of war" was 
the usual entry in the prison books. If we had seized How- 



378 CHINA. 

qua and held him for twentj^-four hours — and he was well 
within our reach — poor old Cooper would be in the bosom 
of his family. But this would have been, according to our 
notions, unjust to Howqua, for the Chinese would not afford 
us legal evidence of his complicity. So poor Cooper 
languished in that loathsome prison, and we are a righteous 
nation, who respect the dicta of learned Dutch jurists. 

When I have said that Mr. Huliatt's soup-kitchen goes 
on well, and that he has already funds to supply a daily meal 
for three months to 1,500 Chinese, I have said all that I 
dare venture to say about this city. A score of letters would 
not exhaust the subject, but the patience of the British public 
has its limits. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

TRADE AND DIPLOMACY. 

Arrival of the Sepoys — Fracas between them and the French — 
Howqua at Home — Estimate of Amount of Stock of Teas — Opinions 
of the Chinese Merchants assembled at Howqua's — Blockade 
Kaised — Police — The Chinese New Year in Canton — Site of the 
New Factories — Adieu to Canton — Diplomatic Occurrences — The 
Americans and Russians join with the English and French — The 
Four Plenipotentiaries prepare to go North. 

The 70th sepoy regiment has arrived. They are doubtless 
very fine high caste gentlemen. It is said that they have 
existed for sixteen days upon bran and water, because they 
had scruples of conscience about cooking at sea. Two 
hundred coolies were assigned to sweep out their quarters, 
because, as General Straubenzee remarks, these men do 
nothing of that sort, but only do soldiers' work. I believe I 
am not more cruel than my neighbours, but I should certaily 
like to see all this nonsense flogged out of these scoundrels. 
In these latter days, when it has been possible to substitute 
other punishments, there has been too much flogging in this 
army for slight offences, and I would willingly spare some 
of our drummers and boatswains' mates for service in the 



THE SEPOYS AT CANTON. 379 

sepoy quarters. They landed, I must admit, in very soldier- 
like order, and, by the aid of our coolies and their own 
camp followers, they were lodged or tented in a marvellously 
short time. The next day they addicted themselves to 
looting, and three of them were shot by the French police. 
The evidence upon the court of inquiry which folio v/ed was 
very contradictory ; but that they were looting, and that 
they resisted the police, were two uncontested facts. Perhaps 
the French were hasty ; but a sepoy in his undress is 
undressed in the literal sense of the term, and it is not quite 
to be wondered at that the Frenchmen had recourse to their 
arms to rid themselves of the blows and brickbats of a crowd 
of half-naked black ruffians. No two human creatures can 
be more different than a sepoy dressed in his red coat and 
faultlessly clean belt and the same animal stalking about on 
his long, lank shanks, with a white girdle round his loins. 
It is ominous of subsequent events that on the third day 
after the arrival of this 70th regiment they were erecting 
two funeral pyres before the eyes of the wondering Chinamen 
just outside the north-east gate, and burning two of their 
comrades. Cremation is a cleanly mode of sepulture, but it 
would be well to preserve entire the classical custom, and to 
perform the rite with sweetly scented woods. 

I am afraid that General Straubenzee, whose popularity has 
been waning since the capture of the city — such is the fate 
of sudden favourites — will not recover his ground by bringing 
his old Indian prejudices into China. He has most unfor- 
tunately commenced his treatment of the sepoys by an act 
which both English and French regard as an insult. When 
an Englishman or a Frenchman is caught plundering he is 
tried by the three commissioners. The first four sepoys 
who were caught looting were withdrawn from the juris- 
diction of the commissioners, and handed back to their own 
colonel. 

Passing from the men of war to the men of peace, we 
approach the question of the reopening of the trade of this 
city. In my last letter I mentioned the contradictory 
opinions existing upon this subject, and the interests wherein 
those opinions had their origin. Soon after it was despatched, 
I had an opportunity of seeing Howqua at his ov/n house. 



380 CHINA. 

Tlie principal Chinese merchants were present, and I was 
surj^rised at the fluency with which they all speak English. 
Howqna stands upon his dignity — or upon the advantage it 
gives him — and replies only through his linguist ; but it is 
evident that he quite understands all that passes. 

It was a point with the English merchants to know — first, 
whether the Canton merchants were prepared to trade ; and 
if so — secondly, what stock they had on hand. 

After a long time spent in questioning and answering, in 
discussing sponge-cakes and sweetmeats, and par/ait amour, 
a list was produced of the teas in stock ; and, making allow- 
ance for the somewhat elastic quantity of a Chinese " chop," 
we estimated the amount at twenty-one millions of pounds 
— all, as we were assured, good sound teas, ready for immediate 
delivery. There is a still larger quantity ready to come 
down. The Chinese, as sellers, are not likely to over-estimate 
the extent of their stock in hand ; but, upon talking this 
matter over with the English merchants, they appear inclined 
to disbelieve both the amount and the quantity of the stock 
in hand ; they say that what teas the Chinese have are chiefly 
those of previous seasons. I am at all times unwilling to 
state facts which may influence present markets, for these 
are subjects on which I am peculiarly liable to be misin- 
formed j and I am without that knowledge of the details of 
Chinese commerce which would enable me to feel confidence 
in deciding between conflicting statements. I confine myself, 
therefore, to reporting the assertions on either side. 

Upon the general question of trading, the Chinese 
merchants assembled at Howqua's seemed to think that, 
upon the authority of Peh-kwei's proclamation, they might 
recommence their business. " More better raake that trade 
pigeon all one fashion — that mandarin pigeon all one fashion." 
The only difficulty they had v»?-as upon the subject of duties. 
They thought that if the allies collected duties Peh-kvyei's 
only incentive to open the trade would be taken away, and 
that trade could not go on. 

Lord Elgin decided this matter as they wished. It was 
found upon consideration that the difficulties in the way of 
collecting the duties ourselves were insuperable. Multitudes 
of international questions would arise, and as the correspou- 



THE STOCK OF TEAS. 381 

dence between Mr. Eeed and Yeh had never been a great 
secret to anybody, it was known that a very small infraction 
would be eagerly laid hold of. Whenever this correspondence 
shall be made public you will find that it is precisely what I 
described it to be at the time, — possibly when Lord Elgin 
might have been quite ignorant of its existence or purport, 
— that the American approached the mandarin almost with 
servility, offering him the protection of his ship and of that 
flag which &c. — and that the mandarin met his offers v/ith a 
curt snubbing and most mortifying contempt. However, 
the attitude of the Americans and the necessities of the 
Chinese government are the evident considerations which 
induced the allied Powers to restore the trade upon its old 
footing, leaving all money matters to be considered hereafter 
as an Imperial question. 

On the 10th, as in my last letter I informed you would 
happen, the blockade was raised. Astonishing numbers of 
great junks had two or three days previously emerged from 
unnoticed creeks, and were fitted for sea with laudable 
activity. On the morning of the 10th the river seemed 
suddenly crowded with huge matted sails, the deserted pack- 
houses on Honan had been rented and refitted by European 
merchants ; and in an hour, as though by enchantment, Canton 
seemed to be in full swing of commerce. Verily this com- 
mercial promptitude is a wonderful thing. Probably some 
portion of those 21,000,000 lbs. of tea is by this time along 
way on towards England. 

To protect this trade a water police has been established ; 
Captain Edgell has this difficult task. Eifteen snake boats 
and three gunboats form what we here call the " piratical 
squadron." Nothing can be more ridiculous than to see 
half a dozen of these boats, crowded with dirty rascals and 
laden with useless guns, towed away by Lieutenant Graham 
or Lieutenant Posen in the Lee or the Kestrel. If I dared 
employ the space necessary to describe some of the ridiculous 
embarrassments with which Captain Edgell has to deal, in 
managing his Chinese squadron, I should have laughable 
things to tell ; however, if tact, and temper, and untiring 
industry can succeed in making an honest and effective 
Chinese water police, Edgell will do it. 



382 CHINA. 

The 14th of February has arrived, and it is the day of the 
Chinese new year. Lanterns are hung out before every door, 
business is closed, and the dark -haired race are employing all 
their energies in exploding crackers and eating pork. There 
is nothing picturesque or pleasant in this feast of lanterns. 
Your Chinaman is a monotonous animal, even in his satur- 
nalia. The women crowd the temples, or light up with 
small red candles their domestic joss-houses. The men pull 
each other's tails, and play half-drunken practical jokes in 
the same temples, or strew the street in front of their doors 
with crackers and set them on fire, keeping up a constant 
detonation all over the city. Moreover, there are feasts at 
the eating-houses ; and sing-song girls, with painted faces, 
sing tom-tom songs and make tom-tom music. If you want 
any work done you are told, " In two three day can do." 
If you want to buy anything, the shopkeeper tells you to 
come again two three day, for that he " too muchee drunkee 
that samshu." Yet there is very little or no riotous 
drunkenness. They act like stupid old children, without the 
innocence, the grace, or the natural freedom of childhood. 

The site of the new British factory, or rather settlement, 
has been fixed upon. The old site is to be abandoned, for 
many reasons, but chiefly because other European nations 
have claims upon it.'''" The new site extends from the creek 
which formed the eastern boundary of the old factory east- 
wards along the bank of the river to a point opposite the 
Dutch Folly. The ground now taken is about four times the 
extent formerl}?- occupied, and it extends from the river back 
to the city wall. 

And now adiea to Canton and to its river. If ever a 
chastisement was merited, it was merited by the inhabitants 
of that city. If ever chastisement was mercifully inflicted, 
it was so inflicted by the expedition which, with so small 
amount of bloodshed, has humbled their barbarous conceit 



'^ Some difficulties arose. The occurrence of the money panic ia 
England and the low prices realized for tea, rendered the merchants- 
less anxious to set about rebuilding their factories. Although the 
boundary stones of the new site had been set up when I left Canton, I 
think it very probable that some change will take place before the site 
is ultimately fixed upon. 



DIPLOMACY. 383 

and muzzled their dull ferocity. If we hold that city for 
two years we shall show them things by which even a China- 
man must learn. 

Having done with Canton, I may now recur to the ques- 
tions of general policy. Upon these I have much news to 
tell which may be curtly told. 

In a former letter I suggested the possibility that the 
early spring might see all the great civilized powers in 
co-operation. This has happened. England, France^ 
America, and Kussia are now in cordial accord. 

Ten days ago the American and Russian embassies were 
settled at Macao, doing nothing. 

Soon after the intention of raising the blockade wa» 
announced, it became known that Mr. Reed had made pre- 
parations for departure northwards, and it was suggested 
that his object was to be out of the way while points of 
difficulty arose, and to allow them to fructify during his 
absence. Again, a little while, and they who were curious in 
watching symptoms noted that the Hon. F. Bruce, the secre- 
tary to the British embassy, was absent. It was not difficult 
to learn that he and the secretary to the French embassy 
proceeded in a gunboat to Macao, had an interview with 
Count Putiatin, then, finding that Mr. Reed had left and 
was already so far on his way as Hongkong, started for 
Hongkong, and after seeing the American minister returned 
to Lord Elgin at Canton. Following up this chain of 
public incidents — which were known, or might have been 
known^ to every man in the fleet — we saw that after this 
interview Mr. Reed immediately returned to Macao and set 
his house in order, gave up all thoughts of his immediate 
journey northwards, sent the Minnesota up the river as far 
as she could safely go, and went on to Canton in the Ante- 
lope (a steamer of light draught which he had hired) and 
visited Lord Elgin on board the Furious. 

About the same time a special courier arrived from Count 
Putiatin, and great activity was observable in the Russian 



All these little facts, patent to the eyes of all the world, 
showed that some unity of action had been agreed upon, 
and set some of us inquiring. 



384 CHINA. 

I have great reason to believe that the overtures made by- 
Lord Elgin and Baron Gros were at once frankly and 
cordially accepted by the representatives both of America 
and Ptussia, and that every act yet done by the belligerent 
allies is now adopted and approved by the two hitherto 
neutral powers. I believe it has been agreed between the 
four powers that they shall proceed in the first instance to 
Shanghai, and there, if possible, make one general treaty. 
If the Court of Pekin should remain unimpressed by the 
union of the four first-class powers of the world, reinforce- 
ments are coming out. Russia will not be long represented 
by a single ship ; America is sending ; France has vessels 
on their way ; and England, if she is to keep the lead which 
she has so worthily assumed and hitherto so wisely main- 
tained, will also strengthen her force. It is, however, to be 
hoped that no further act of conquest will be required. 
Each of the four powers has, as I understand, sent to Pekin a 
general statement of grievances and demands. Mr. Olij^hant, 
Lord Elgin's private secretary, and the Yicomte de Coutades, 
Baron Gros's private secretary, left Hongkong yesterday in 
the Formosa for Shanghai. Whether the Russian and 
American despatches went by the same steamer I have not 
heard ; but that they are gone, or are immediately about to 
go, is undoubted. I think it will be found that the four 
powers, in these communications, invite the emperor to send 
to Shanghai a minister of high rank, properly accredited, to 
treat for a new treaty upon the basis of free transit through- 
out China under proper protection from Chinese authority ; 
permanent diplomatic relations at Pekin ; unrestricted com- 
merce; and indemnity for losses and expenses incurred. 

The result of these communications it would be very rash 
to attempt to predict, but it is comfortable to know that we 
are now acting, not as a single state, but in concurrence v/ith 
all the civilization of the world. It is the end only which 
can crown the work, and I offer no unreserved congratula- 
tions until I see the treaty ; but hitherto Lord Elgin and 
Baron Gros have certainly done well — our diplomatists have 
been as fully up to their work as our sailors and soldiers. 

Lord Elgin and Baron Gros will go north in about three 
weeks. The Count Putiatin goes almost immediately — for 



DIPLOMATIC MOVEMENTS. 385 

his little steamer will Lave a long struggle against the 
mousoon. Mr. Reed goes to Manilla, to pass the interval 
between the present date and the time when he must proceed 
to the rendezvous at Shanghai. 

The Inflexihle, with Yeh on board, is gone down to Hong- 
kong, and is preparing to proceed with that mandarin, who 
is now the prisoner of the four great pov/ers, to Calcutta. 

Notwithstanding all the work which \yq have upon our 
hands in India and elsewhere, the position which England 
holds in this movement of the civilization of the "West asfainst 

o 

the barbarism of the East is worthy of her history. 



CHAPTEH XXXI. 

ADIEU TO CniNA. 

Lord Elgin's Prospects in the North — Celehration of the Chinese New 
Year at Hougkong — Hongkong Races — Our True Policy in Dealing 
with the Chinese — The Sinologues and their Prejudices — The Chinese 
Teachers — The Author leaves China in company with Yeh. 

Hoi-rGKOXG, Feb. 22. 

Some months Avill probably elapse before any very important 
political event can occur in China. That the country round 
Canton is arming, there is no doubt, but the elders of Fatshan 
have in a formal petition assured the admiral that the purpose 
is only defence against the rebels, who threaten that rich city. 
They implore the admiral not to take any step that may 
frighten their bra^-es. The general doubts, but I believe the 
admiral and Lord Elgin for once put faith in Chinese 
professions. I put implicit faith, not in their professions, 
but in their fears, and have no more idea that the Chinese 
will attack Canton than that they will attack the ToVi^er of 
London. 

Unless, therefore, this remote possibility should occur, 
China will for some little time present only a faint diplo- 
matic and commercial interest. 

The four great powers allow the emperor until the end of 
2 c 



386 CHINA. 

Marcli to send down his plenipotentiary to Shanghai, and in 
the mean time they cease from what diplomacy is pleased to 
call their " quasi-belligerent " proceedings. 

If we employ this interval in speculations as to the future, 
we do so at great risk of being contradicted by events, for 
no country under heaven has been so unfortunate for 
political prophets. Perhaps the emperor may receive 
prudent counsels, and all may be settled at Shanghai. It 
is even upon the cards that Lord Elgin may never go north- 
wards of that port, except to Japan. If he should get all 
he wants, he will have no pretence to force himself upon the 
reluctant court of Pekin ; and in that case the permanent 
ambassndor may come direct from England. Personally, 
Lord Elgin would very probably like to finish a successful 
embassy by a j)rogress to the Chinese metropolis : but not 
at the expense of the real objects of his mission. I am, 
however, not quite inclined to think that the emperor v/ill 
yield, and that the interest of the China expedition is over. 
You can tell better than I can what reinforcements are 
coming from Europe, and when we shall be prepared to 
commence war upon a great scale in the north. We may 
not forget that Chekiang has been retaken, or rather re- 
bought from the rebels ; and if this should render the 
passage of the grain-junks to Pekin open, it will increase 
the confidence and obstinacy of the imperial court. This, 
however, will still depend upon the repair of the Grand 
Canal in that part of its course. 

During the entracte all China has been exploding crackers,, 
and Hongkong has been celebrating its " Isthmian games." 
Towards the close of the three days of festivity, the Chinese 
holiday became almost exciting. If they had kept up half 
as sharp a fire at Canton on the 29ih of December as they 
did on the 14th of February, we should never have got over 
the walls with a less loss than 500 men. The streets both 
of Canton and Hongkong were piled with myriads of 
exploded cracker-carcases. In Hongkong, where I passed 
the last day of these festivities, grave men and sedate children 
were from morning till midnight hanging strings of these 
noisy things from their balconies, and jjerpetually renewing 
them as they exploded. The sing-song vromen, in their rich,. 



THE SING-SONG WOMEN. 387 

handsome dresses, were screeching their shrill songs and 
twanging their tv/o-stringed lutes on every verandah in the 
Chinese quarter ; vrhile the lords of creation assembled at 
a round table were cramming the day-long repast. The 
women — hired singing women of not doubtful reputation — in 
the intervals of their music take their seats at the table oppo- 
site the men. They do not eat ; but, their business being to 
promote the conviviality of the feast, they challenge the men. 
to the samshu-cup and drink with them. It is astonishing to 
see what a quantity of diluted samshu these painted and 
brocaded she-celestials can drink without any apparent 
effect. Ever and anon one of the company retires to a 
couch and takes an opium-pipe, and then returns and re- 
commences his meaL I was invited to one of these feasts. 
The dishes were excellent ; but it lasted till I loathed the 
sight of food. I believe the Chinese spend fabulous 
sums in these entertainments ; the sing-song women are 
often brought from distances, and are certainly chosen with 
some discrimination. They are an imitation of the Chinese 
lady, and as the Chinese lady has no education and no 
duties, the difference between the sing-song girl and the 
poor abject wife is probably not observable in appearance 
or manner. 

The dress is particularly modest and becoming. They all 
have great quantities of black hair. If they would let it fall 
dishevelled down their backs as the Manilla women do (those 
glorious ox-eyed Bacchantes, in whose quick pulses v/e can feel 
the blood of the eastern and the western south meet and riot), 
they would be more pictmesque, but not formal and decent, 
as China is, even in its wantonness. The Chinawoman's liair 
is gummed and built up into a structure rather resembling a 
huge flat-iron, and the edifice is adorned with combs and 
jewels and flowers, arranged with a certain taste. An em- 
broidered blue silk tunic reaches from her chin nearly to her 
ankles. Below the tunic appear the gay trousers, wrought 
v/ith gold or silver thread. Then, if she be a large-footed 
woman, as they all are in Hongkong, we see the instep 
glancing through the thin white silk stocking, and a very 
small foot (when left to nature the Chinese have beautiful 
feet and hands) in a rich slipper, with a tremendous white 
2 c 2 



3S8 CHINA. 

sole, ill form of an inverted pyramid. In these sing-song 
girls you see the originals of the Chinese pictures, — the 
painted faces, the high-arched pencilled eyebrows, the small 
round mouth, the rather full and slightly sensual lip, natu- 
rally or artificially of a deep vermilioi), the long slit-shaped, 
half-closed eyes, suggestive of indolence and slyness. It is, 
however, a fete,, and not an orgie. What the voluble and 
jocose conversation addressed to them by the men may mean 
I cannot tell ; but their manners are quite decent, their 
replies are short and reserved, and every gesture, or song, or 
cup of samshu, seems to be regulated by a known ceremoniaL 
For the first time since I have been in China, I have seen 
Chinamen under the influence of samshu. They are not 
boisterous, or even jolly, when in this state, but only sheepish 
and good-humoured. I saw no quarrels. 

The Englishman's holiday followed. If any one is de- 
sirous of seeing good, steady, old-fashioned racing, wdiere 
there are no crosses and where every horse is started and 
ridden to win, I am afraid he must go to Hongkong for it. 
A Londoner cannot conceive the excitement caused in this 
little distant island by the race-week. It is the single 
holiday of the merchants. Thej^ spend weighty sums in im- 
porting horses from all parts and training them for the con- 
test. Yv'e may smile at this truly English mania struggling 
against strong discouragement ; but the means of amusement 
are not numerous at Hongkong. "When we first see the 
racecourse in " the Hajipy Valley," we are half tempted to 
declare that it is the most picturesque spot in the whole 
world. The scenery, liowever, must not distract our atten- 
tion while Snowdrop is making the running. The grand 
stand, and the booths, and the stables, and all the pro- 
prieties of the turf, by no means forgetting the luncheons 
and the champagne, are all in first-rate order. The 
one mile and a half of road between " the Happy Valley " 
and the city of Victoria is a,t the proper time crowded 
with vehicles and horsemen and pedestrians, and sometimes 
the pace is rapid, and sometimes one of the party blows 
a horn. The Wong-nei-chong stakes are of foreign 
sound, but so also is the Cesarewitch. Six Arabs come 
forth to dispute the Canton cup, the most important of the 



THE HONG-KONG EACE3. 389 

six races of the first daj : if the pace is not very fleet the 
contest is severe, aucl the run honest. Enthusiasts from 
Shanghai sometimes come doAvn and win away the honours 
from the great stables of Victoria ; the Capnlets and Mon- 
tagus of China meet here in friendly emulation, and " Sir 
Michael" and "Snowdon" are important champions. So 
also are the 9 st. 7 lb. men, the gentlemen jocks, who, prin- 
cipally supplied by her Majesty's army and navy, seem 
wonderfully brilliant to the eyes of the clustering thousands 
of Chinese. Three dr.ys of crisp sunshine, the only three 
days of really glorious weather that I have seen in Hong- 
kong, crown the spectacle. Jove looks down propitious upon 
the holiday of the exile, and smiles to see that his best 
happiness is to cheat himself with some semblance of his home. 

Lord Elgin did not come down to patronize the races. 
He was too busy at Canton building up the mixed govern- 
ment of that city before he departs north. He came dov^^n 
on the evening of the 20th. Probably the next mail may 
bring you news that he is on his way to Shanghai. 

"Will he have the clearness to see through, and the strength 
of purpose to break through, the pompous nonsense of the 
Chinese ceremonial ? Will he have the strength of mind to 
contemn the hollow pretensions of those weak and worthless 
mandarins 1 Will his rare union of strong common sense 
and polished subtlety lead him beyond the influence 
of those greatest dupes in all China, " the twenty-years-in- 
the -country -and -speak -the- language " men? This is a 
question which nothing that has transpired enables me to 
answer. The grave mistake of these men is that they cannot 
learn that in China words are not things. Your English 
student in Chinese is, almost without exception, ignorant of 
the Western world and ignorant of his ignorance. He is 
also necessarily ignorant of the Eastern world in action. He 
believes, therefore, in books and in state papers, and has 
never learnt to judge men by what they do, and not by what 
they say. The Chinaman, although in a less degree, falls 
into the same error. Our Englishmen read that Confucius 
and Mencius taught a system of ethics ; they also read 
that the Chinaman considers himself the superior of an 
English barbarian, and his officers infinitely the superiors 



390 CHINA. 

of ail foreign officials. Words, mere words. The Cliina- 
man's practice is not governed by his sacred books, and he 
does not for a moment believe that he is superior to the 
nations of the West. On the other hand, the Chinaman is 
told that we ha,ve a religion that teaches us to return good 
for evil, and he sometimes — as recently, after the Portuguese 
ma.ssacre, and still more recently in a proclamation issued at 
Honan — shows us that we have an opportunity of practising 
this precept. 

Now, the Chinaman acts as if he did not believe his own 
professions, and v/e act, and shall continue to act, as if we 
did not believe ours, in the naked sense of the terms. The 
Chinaman, however, is more teachable than we are. The 
bombardment of Canton has fixed grave doubts in his mind 
as to the practical operation of our peace-breathing religion j 
but the flexibility of Peh-Kwei and the Tartar general ; the 
submissive manner in which the Chinese of Canton take off 
their hats and let down their tails when foreigners pass ; the 
presence of Howqua in his peacock's feathers standing among 
our marines in the general's antechamber — nay, the notes of 
the vermilion pencil shov/ing the emperor's dread and terror 
of foreign powers, cannot teach our Chinese sciolists. They 
sigh still to be recognized, in words, as the equals of toutais 
and footais, and think that this recognition is the worthy 
object of all our spent treasure and spilt blood. 

I hope that Lord Elgin will spend no {ime upon this idle 
folly, and yield no practical point for such silliness. I hope 
that he will openly declare he holds all such things as utterly 
■unimportant, and that he is not come 16,000 miles to discuss 
such nonsense, although he is prepared to punish imperti- 
nence. If the Chinese can only get him to admit that there 
is something in these ridiculous pretensions — something to 
be combated — something to be given up, they will place the 
discussion upon a footing to barter soap bubbles for gold. 
They can blow these bubbles till all the plenipos die of old 
age. Who knows? The Chinese may at last begin them- 
selves to believe that there is some intrinsic truth in their 
own vain boastings. 

I shall, of course, be told that I am contemning a thing of 
which I am utterly ignorant. But if no one w^ho is not able 



SINOLOGUES. 391 

to speak the Chinese language is entitled to a voice upon 
Chinese policy, the question is in very few hands, and^ as 
events have shown, those few hands are not the safest. It 
does so happen that no one fact in all our recent affairs v/ith 
Chinamen has occurred as we were led to believe it would 
occur by those who profess an acquaintance with the language 
and literature of China. 

"When I first came to this country I took infinite pains 
to collect information from Chinese scholars. " Sir, I have 
been fifteen years in the country and speak the language," 
was the stern and decisive interruption to a timidly inter- 
jected remark after half an hour of patient listening. 
How lovingly I sat at the feet of that Gamaliel, as in 
his generous affluence he poured forth a full stream of 
information as to what I should see — what I should investi- 
gate — but, more especially, what I onust write. Yet, somehow, 
he did not talk as we are accustomed to fancy that Gamaliel 
must have talked. However, here at last was somebody who 
had given himself up to the study of China — some one v/ho 
w^as not rather proud that he had been many years in the 
country without being able to speak one word of Chinese, 
and of knowing nothing of the people except tbat they were 
all a set of rascals. But my new master called for great 
sacrifices. 

He insisted that I should disbelieve all that has yet been 
written on the subject, and nearly all that I had fondly 
fancied I had seen. In return he liberally supplied me with 
new facts, and theories of startling novelty, and he sent me 
away in a meditative and saddened mood. A few days after 
I conversed with a man who had been a shorter time in the 
country, but who could speak and write the language. In 
order to make place for the truths he had to tell, I must 
imlearn again all I had learnt just before. Faintly remon- 
strating — for you must not be argumentative with these 
long-time-in-the-country-and-speak-the-languagemen — I was 
promptly asked, " Surely you do not mean to entertain the 
English joubiic with the crotchets of that man 1 Why, sir, 
he is mad, stark mad." A little later — for I was diligent in 
inquiry and longed to rest myself upon the experience of 
some infallible teacher — I found a still older resident. He, 



392 CHINA. 

when I mentioned tlie name of my last friend, relaxed into 
an indulgent smile — " A smatterer, my good sir, a mere 
smatterer. It is very creditable to him to have got up a 
little Chinese, but all he has told you about that tract of 
the Tai-pings is based upon an utter misconception of the 
language." "But the Pekin gazettes?" — " He can't read 
them, and can't understand his teachers v/lien they explain 
them." 

Another, and another, and ten others, and still the same 
unsatisfactory result. I found at last that all these twenty- 
years-in-the-country-and-speak-the-languagemen — everyone 
of whom is an oracle — destroy each other by their conflicting 
vaticinp.tions. Some names there are which for knowledge 
of the lano-uai^e stand too hifjh for scoffs to reach : and some 
others, good Chinese scholars, and working harmoniously 
together, are too much absorbed in public duties to look far 
abroad. Conscious of my own utter weakness, and anxious 
to twine round any prop — ullius addictus jurare in verba, 
magistri — I could find none whom any other Chinese scholar 
would admit to be a safe stay. One was a merchant, I was 
told — an opium-dealer — one who can see but little of the 
Chinese, and that little of the baser kind ; to a second it was 
objected that he was a missionary, whose only object was to 
cook up reports for Exeter Hall ; a third was an official 
man, who could only look upon China through mandarin 
despatches, or at best out of his sedan chair ; a fourth was 
a very good ornithologist, and had a smattering of geology 
and some acquaintance with beetles, but knew nothing of 
China ; a fifth was a rabid rebel; a sixth a red-hot imperialist; 
a seventh used his Chinese learning as alchymists used their 
chymistry, only to work out some absurd theory ; an eighth 
shut himself up and wrought anotion of Chinese character from 
the depths of his own inner consciousness ; and a ninth was 
a Jesuit, who had lived too long among the Chinese to know 
anything about them. I am very far from saying that these 
objections are well founded. On the contrary, I believe 
that none of them are absolutely true, and that some of 
them have but small colour of truth. Each one of these men 
has valuable information to impart. To admit that they have 
their hobbies and their prejudices, is only to say that they 



CHINESE PARADOXIES. 303 

are men. I by no means judge them as they judge either 
themselves or each other. All that I affirm is, that even if 
I were the meekest of disciples, there is no received expo- 
nent of the views of Chinese scholars ; and therefore I am 
not presumptuous in questioning opinions which are not only 
often falsified by the event, but which are also often hotly 
disputed among themselves. 

Vt^e in England certainly do not want either to read or 
speak Chinese ; we only want to know to what extent it is 
necessary for our interests that Chinese shall be spoken and 
written by Englishmen in China, and what are the con- 
ditions of the necessary supply. 

In a country where the roses have no fragrance, and the 
women no petticoats ; where the labourer has no Sabbath, 
and the magistrate no sense of honour ; where the roads bear 
no vehicles, and the ships no keels ; where old men fly kites ; 
where the needle points to the south, and the sign of being 
puzzled is to scratch the antipodes of the head ; Avhere the 
place of honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect 
is in the stomach ; where to take off your hat is an insolent 
gesture, and to wear white garments is to put yourself in. 
mourning — we ought not to be astonished to find a literature 
without an alphabet* and a language without a grammar. If 
we add that for countless centuries the government has been 
in the handsof state philosophers, and the vernacular dialects 
have been abandoned to the labouring classes (I am about in 
the next few words to call forth the execration of every 
sinologue in Europe and Asia), we must not be startled to 
find that this Chinese language is the most intricate, cum- 
brous, and unwieldy vehicle of thought that ever obtained, 
among any people. 

There are eighteen distinct languages in China, besides 
the court dialect ; and although, by a beautiful invention 
deserving of all imitation, the written language is so contrived 

* The fact of there bemg no alphabet in the Chinese, accounts for 
the diversity of spelKng which we find in the writings that reproduce 
Chinese words. Each man imitates the sound he v^^ishes to repeat, in 
European letters. Not only, therefore, will an Englishman and a 
Frenchman spell the same Chinese word very differently, but two 
Englishmen will vary their spelling according as their ear may be- 
more or less true. 



394 CHINA. 

as to denote bj the same character the sounds of each of the 
nineteen different words, all of which it equally represents, 
this is of no great use among the multitude who cannot 
read. There is not a man among our Chinese scholars 
who can speak three of these languages with fluency, and 
there is not one who can safely either write or interpret 
an important state paper without the assistance of a 
" teacher." 

These " teachers " are, necessarily, the very scum and 
refuse of the Chinese literary body — the plucked of the ex- 
aminations, and the runagates from justice or tyranny. They 
are hired at a far lower salary than they would obtain in 
their own country as secretaries to a high official, and if they 
can write a fair hand, or speak a tolerable idiom, or pro- 
nounce with a certain purity of accent (although they may 
be known to be domestic spies, repeating all they see and 
hear), they are respected and almost venerated by the 
Endish sinoloo:ue who maintains them. If one of these 
learned persons should happen also to be the son of some 
small mandarin, he becomes to his pupil a great authority on 
Chinese politics and a Petronius of Chinese ceremonial. 
Papers are indited and English policy is shaped according to 
the response of the oracle. The sinologue who derives his 
inspirations from this source is again taken as an absolute 
authority by the poor helpless general, or admiral, or amibas- 
sador, who thinks it his dut}^ to adopt what he is told are 
Chinese customs and to ape the Chinese ceremonial. 

We want interpreters — plenty of them. We cannot pay 
too high for them ; for we must bid high to have them of a 
good quality, and at present even our courts of justice are 
brought to a stand-still for want of them. We want also 
Chinese scholars. But we want them to interpret the policy 
of English statesmen, not to originate a policy of Chinese 
crotchets. They know nothing of the national interests of 
England, nothing of our commercial wants ; they are trying 
all their lives, laudably and zealously, but rather vainly 
trying, to learn the Chinese forms of official writing, and 
the practice of Chinese ceremonial. 

I labour this subject because it is all-important here ; 
because it is all unknown to English minds ; because it has 



THE WAES OF THE SINOLOGUES. 395 

been my ambition, by means of these letters, to direct the 
public opinion, and to lead the minds of our rulers to the 
fact that our principal difficulties have arisen from adopting 
the Chinese practice of submitting questions of state policy 
to men of merely literary attainments. They are excellent, 
most valuable, most indispensable, in their proper sphere; 
but they are necessarily men who see atoms through micro- 
scopes, and lead us into national wars for matters not worth 
a sheet of foolscap. 

Yell is about to depart for Calcutta in the Inflexible; 
another black regiment (the 6oth) is coming on to garrison 
Hongkong ; and the diplomatic body is dispersing for the 
short recess which precedes the session at Shanghai. I shall 
take advantage of the general holiday to accompany Yeh to 
Calcutta. It will be interesting to study the character of a 
caged mandarin. 

SiNGAPOEE, March 1. 

P.S. — The Injlexihle arrived here this morning on her 
v/ay to Calcutta. Yeh has endured the discomfort of his 
sea-sickness much better than we expected. He eats a great 
deal, sleeps a great deal, and washes very little. He may 
be pronounced, therefore, to be in very good case, and we 
hope to deliver him over to the governor-general safe and 
sound. It was said at Hongkong that Lord Elgin had left 
it to the discretion of Lord Canning to detain him at Cal- 
cutta, or to send him to England. Should the governor- 
general resolve upon the latter course, Yeh will make but 
an intractable London lion. You will never get him to 
shake his mane and roar. In my next letter from Calcutta 
I hope to be able to give you the first full-length study of a 
first-class mandarin that has ever been submitted to the 
Western world. 



396 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

CONVERSATIONS WITH YEH. 

Description of Yeh — The Different Povtrcaits of him — His Behaviour 
when taken — His Early Suspicions — His Private Life— His Diet — - 
His Keligion — His Dirtiness — Departure in the Injlcxible — Sea- 
sickness — His Account of the Executions of the Rebels — Is Yeh a. 
Eatalist ? — His Reception of the Bishop of Victoria's Tracts — His 
Opinions on Dissection — His Knowledge in Geography and History 
— His Dislike of Competition — His Falsehood — Yeh's Account of 
his own Career — His Ignorance of Chinese Dialects — His Explana,- 
tions of Chinese Philosophy — The Canton Affair — Yeh on Deck — 
Arrival in the Plooghly — Lands at Fort William. 

Calcutta Eivee, March 17. 

I TOLD you in my last letter from Hongkong that I 
intended to accompany Yeh to his place of captivity. 

I cannot tell whether the public mind of England will take- 
such interest in this man Yeh as I have taken. I have 
caught at the opportunity of accompanying him in this 
voyage as a chance of studying Chinese character which has 
never before happened, and which may not soon recur. 

Hitherto, v/e have been told, and truly told, that we can- 
not judge the ruling class of Chinese from the coolies, the 
compradors, and the traders with whom we are brought 
into contact, nor from the half-educated '- teachers," who are- 
retained upon a scanty pittance by our sinologues ; nor from 
the occasional interviews we have had with high mandarins. 
I have been shut up for many days with the great Chinaman 
of the present day. Yeh must be hereafter one of the men 
of Chinese history. He is the second man of the empire. 
He has exercised high offices for more than a quarter of 
a century. He has ruled with an absolute despotism 
30,000,000 of souls. His sentences have been tortures, his- 
lightest words have been death. He has been to China 
what Wentworth was to Ireland, and wished to be to 



PERSONAL DESCEIPTION OF YEH. G97 

England. His policy has been " tliorougb," and lie has been 
able to work it out in a reign of terror unrestrained. He 
tells, with a coarse laugh, that he has himself sentenced to 
death 100,000 of his countrymen and countrywomen, and 
he boasts that that estimate must be quadrupled if we take 
into account the towns and villages destroyed by his orders. 
Yet after this successful career of ruthless energy, he sud- 
denly adopted towards us a conduct which appears in our 
eyes to have had no other qualities than sloth and insolence. 
He fell, earning from no Englishman the respect due to a 
gallant enemy, and he lives execrated by every Chinaman 
as a traitor to the ancient suicide-enjoining traditions of his 
country. He rose to his great position under a system of 
competitive examination, and in a state where executive 
ability alone is supposed to lead to high office, and he is 
acknowledged to be of the very first excellence in all the 
learning of China. 

Such a man must be a great problem. If I fail to solve 
it, I may, at any rate, suppl}^ to others the materials for a 
solution. I hope this is sufiicient excuse for having consti- 
tuted myself the Boswell of this terrible Johnson. 

In his personal appearance Yeh is a very stout and rather 
tall man, about five feet eleven, with the long thin Chinese 
moustache and beard, a remarkably receding forehead,* a 
sknll in which what the jjhrenologists call " veneration " is 
much developed ; a certain degree of rotundity behind the 
ear, and a moderate development of the back head. Shorn 
nearly to the crown, and very thinly covered with hair in 
that part where the Chinese mostly cultivate their hair, our 
mandarin offers every facility for craniological examination. 
His tail is very paltry, very short, and very thin. The 
smallest porker in China has a better tail than her highest 
mandarin. 

His face is heavy : there is more chin than you usually 

* The shape of YeL's skull is very remarkable. It is shown in none 
of hits portraits, for he is on these occasions particular in wearing his 
official cap. The forehead recedes at an angle of forty-five to the back 
of the skull, which is very high, and descends almost in a straight line 
to the neck. 



398 CHINA. 

see in a Chinaman — more jowl and jaw, indicative of wil! 
and obstinacy. The nose is long and flat, the nostrils form- 
ing one side of a very obtuse angle. Seen in profile, the 
nose is very remarkable and very ngly ; in the front face 
"ihis, the most simial expression of the man's countenance, is 
Jiitigated. The eye — that slit Mongolian eye — is the most 
expressive feature of the man who is sitting opposite to me, 
and looking rather suspiciously at me as I am now writing. 
In his ordinary mood there is only a look of shrewdness and 
quick cunning in this, the only mobile feature of his face ; 
but I have seen him in the turning moments of his life, 
when those eyelids opened wide, and those eyeballs glared 
with terror and with fury. He has a large protruding mouth, 
thick lips, and very blacli teeth ; for, as he remarks, " it never 
has been the custom of his family to use a toothbrush." It 
is, however, a very common custom in some Chinese families, 
as any one may see who walks the streets of Canton and 
notices the coolies and small traders at their ablutions. 

ITe does not wear long nails ; he says he has been too 
busy all his life to do so. His hands, as is almost univer- 
sally the case in China, are small and well-shaped. The 
same occupations which have prevented him from growiDg 
his nails seem to have kept him from washing his hands. I 
think I can remember, however, that when first taken his 
nails were of Chinese growth. 

No habit of looking at Yeh deadens the feeling of repul- 
sion which the expression of his huge face inspires. The 
English Y>^^hlic are by this time familiar with his features, 
chiefly through a profile sketched by Major Crealock at the 
moment when he was brought in a prisoner. This has been 
copied and re-copied and lithographed by the Chinamen of 
Hongkong, and sent home to England in hundreds of letters. 
It has been sometimes thought to be a caricature, and in the 
lithograph there is some exaggeration. But the original 
sketch is the most striking likeness I ever saw. I stood at 
the major's side while he was pencilling and we compared 
the portrait with the man. It is true, it was taken in a 
moment of mental terror, while the prisoner's eyes were 
ranging round a large room in quest of a headsman and his 
sword ; but in his quiet moments the expression, although 



yeh's oowaedice. 399' 

mitigated in degree, is the same in cliaracter — a face of dulV 
heavy, stolid, impassible cruelty.'"' 

There is strong will, there is dogmatic perseverance, there 
is immovable, inert resistance ; but there is no active courage 
in that face, nor in that heart. "When Captain Key seized 
him, his vast carcase shook with terror, and he completely 
lost all presence of mind. Perhaps this is not to be much 
wondered at. Fifty blue-jackets, with drawn swords and 
revolvei's, were dancing round him like madmen, flourishing 
their cutlasses, throwing up their hats, and cheering at the 
top of their voices. He might well believe that his last moment 
v/as come. But a man who had sent so many thousands to 
their great account, might be expected to meet his own fate 
with dignity. Yeh was not equal to this. He shook, he 
made gestures of submission, he denied his identity, he would 
have fallen, had not Captain Key held him up. In the 
presence of the admirals his fright was ill concealed by an 
assumption of impudence. When Captain Hall took him 
on board the Inflexible, he trembled violently as he went up) 
the ladder ; and when on board, he eagerly inquired w^hether 
he was to be put to death. As soon as he had ascertained 
that it was not our custom to kill our prisoners, he seemed 
quite contented. As he had previously considered his death 
certain, so he now became convinced of his absolute security. 
During all these early scenes, however much he suffered 
from the infirmity of bodily fear, his arrogance never, after 
the first moment, forsook him. I have in a fonner letter 
related his behaviour to the admiral v/hen interrogated by 
him as to the fate of Cooper and other European captives. 
This, however, was the impudence of despair. When 
Captain Hall took him off in his boat, he refused to sit by 
his side in the stern- sheets, but squatted on the thwart 
opposite, thereby rendering it necessary to lay in the stroke- 

''' As this sketch has been made public in various ways, I have 
inserted in this volume a copy of the photograph taken of him at 
Calcutta. Yeh is very fond of having his poi'trait taken, and mani- 
fested the greatest impatience to see this. He was tantalized by several 
days' delay, while the artist was preparing a fine frame. It must be- 
remembered, however, that this is Yeh carefully "got up," in face and 
dress, for the purpose of being photographed. Major Crealock's sketch 
was taken in the moment of his mortal fright. 



4:00 CHINA. 

■oar, but still not avoiding frequent digs in tlie back from the 
Iv'nnckles of No. 7 oarsman. 

As soon as he became composed on board the Inflexible, 
he took np those childisli tricks which have sometimes em- 
barrassed our diplomatists by their simple impudence. He 
liad come off to the ship solely to see Lord Elgin, and won- 
dered he had not kept his appointment. He had determined 
not to wait for him much longer. He refused his autograph 
vv^hen Sir John Bowring asked him for it, because he said it 
was impossible to write an indifferent sentence in Chinese — 
every word can be distorted to some hidden meaning. The 
Chinese minister evidently believed that we considered him 
still as a person from whom a treaty might be obtained, and 
he was prepared to make a good diplomatic fight. 

At first he treated Mr. Alabaster, the interpreter ap- 
pointed to attend him, with infinite rudeness and contempt. 
He was magnificent and theatrical in his answer to Lord 
Elgin's message communicating to him that he was to go to 
Calcutta. He refused all conversation, telling Mr. Alabaster 
that he knew he was a spy put over him to report all he 
might say. Mr. Alabaster, of course, replied that he was 
not a spy, but a public servant ; and that Yeh, himself a 
great officer, must know that it was his duty to report to 
his superiors. In one of the earliest interviews I had with 
him, I was careful to make him understand the functions 
which I was discharging. Mr. Alabaster exhibited to him 
a copy of the Times, at the size whereof he seemed greatly 
astonished. I told him that the learned men of the AVestern 
world were much perplexed upon questions of Chinese 
government and philosophy, and that 1 should consider my- 
self fortunate if he thouofht fit throucjli me to inform them 
upon these subjects. At this time his reply was usually 
either a grunt or a grin ; he answered my appeal with a 
grunt. 

This uncomfortable state of suspicion gave v/ay under the 
judicious treatment of the high authorities. When he 
found that Lord Elgin took no notice of him, unless to send 
curt messages inquiring after his personal comfort, — when 
he saw that, while treating him with all respect, and doing 
all he could for his convenience; Captain Brooker paid na 



yeh's modesty. 401 

attention to where he sat, or v/hat he wore, or how he 
demeaned himself, — when he discovered that no one wished 
to make him sign any treaty, or to question him ni3on topics 
wliich he declined to enter upon, he gradually relaxed. I 
think that before we left Hongkong he had recognized his 
true position, and had convinced himself that the treatment 
he received was only the respect accorded to a prisoner of 
high rank, whose power for good or for evil had passed 
away. He gave up playing the high mandarin, conversed 
with affability upon indifferent subjects, preferred a request 
for a daily ration of six pounds of fresh pork, presented a 
portion of his stock of oranges to the ward-room mess, and 
begged to be allowed to send for a full supply of Chinese 
tobacco. 

Up to this time the only occasions upon which he mani- 
fested any vivacity were upon discussions as to his food. 
His Chinese cook was sent for, and arrived at the last 
moment with great stores of Chinese comestibles, to his 
immense satisfaction. Visitors annoyed him. He Vv^as, or 
pretended to be, much shocked at the dress of an English 
lady. He kept his eyes studiously turned from her, and 
remarked afterwards that her throat was not covered. Mr. 
Alabaster showed him some portraits in an Illustrated ISfews 
of ladies in ball-room dress. Yeh was scandalized ; that 
women should wear bedgowns was proper, but that they 
should be painted in their bedgowns was atrocious. 

When left alone, he would climb up to the stern-ports and 
look out upon Hongkong ; but he never could be prevailed 
upon to say any more of the city of Victoria tlian that it 
was '• Hao," — " Good." If any one came down while he was 
looking out, he returned gravely to his seat, rather annoyed 
at being detected in so undignified a curiosity. 

Yeh is in his private life a very respectable Ciiinaman. 
He is entirely free from all suspicion ot those detestable 
habits common to his countrymen, and for which even the 
virtuous Keying was but too notorious. He smokes no 
opium ; his ordinary drink is only v/arm tea ; he uses 
samshu only as a medicine. He has sent his only wife, 
imder the protection of his father, to his native village. He 
spoke of his concubines ; but as I could not tell how far it 

2 D 



402 CHINA. 

might be v/rong in his eyes to show curiosity on this topiCy 
I did not learn their number or destination. He has no 
son ; but has adopted a nephew, who is now twenty-four 
years old, and is pursuing his studies at Pekin. 

He eats twice a day of four or five succulent dishes, and 
he has the good sense to eat rice with each dish, not re- 
serving it for the end of the dinner, as the Chinese do at 
their leasts. He drinks nothing while eating. 

His devotions consist of sitting in the posture of a Chinese 
idol, his legs crossed, and his face to the east. He remains 
in an abstracted state for about ten minutes, and the act of 
devotion is accomplished. When he first came on board, he 
retired into this contemplative state several times a day. 
He afterwards became much more remiss, and once a day 
appeared to suffice him. He uses no idol, and when asked 
whether he wished for any facilities for performing his 
devotions privately, replied tliat he wanted nothing of the 
.sort. I imacfined that this was an act of devotion according* 
to the custom of the higher sect of the Bhuddists j but one 
day, when he was in special good humour, he condescended 
to explain why he turned himself to the east, instead of to 
the west, which is the birthplace of Bhudda. He said, if he 
were praying, he should turn to the west ; but he is not 
praying. He turns to the east because the east is the " seng 
chi " — the principle of life, as the west is the principle of 
death. He says the four cardinal points agree with the four 
seasons : the north is the winter, the south is the summer, 
the east is the spring, and the west is the autumn. 

We asked him what Taoli this was, "Confucian 1 "— " Yes." 
" Bhuddist ? "— " Yes." " Taouist 1 "— " Yes. It is more 
ancient even than Confucius. It is the ancient ceremonial 
of China." " Are the Taoli of Confacius and Bhudda and 
Laou-tsze all subordinate to the ancient Taoli of China ? " — 
*' Yes ; they are all included in it. From the time there 
was an east there was this Taoli." 

In the practice of that virtue which we Westerns are 
glad to rank next to godliness, Yeh is certainly not con- 
spicuous. A more undesirable messmate for the commander 
of a ship of war can scarcely be imagined. He spits, he 
smokes, he eructates, and he blows his nose with his fingers. 



YEIl's DIRTINESS. 403 

Captain Brooker has taught him the comfort of a pocket- 
handkerchief, but not to use it for this purpose. His daily 
ablutions consist of a slight rubbiug of the face with a 
towel moistened in hot water. He has a horror of fresh air, 
and while in Chinese waters never willingly went on decl?:- 
He loved to have the ports closed and the skylights down. 

He v/ears thickly-padded stockings, the long, blue, sleeved, 
quilted cape, and blue pantaloons tied at the ankle, common 
to all Chinamen. He boasts that he has worn his outer coat 
for ten years, and its appearance justifies his assertion, — it 
is stiff with grease. When we drew near to Singapore, 
within one degree of the line, the heat became frightful. 
His practice then was, while steaming from libations of hot 
tea, to strip off his coat and sit in his long yellow grass-cloth, 
shirt, Viet and discoloured — a. most disgustiug object. 

Once, after six weeks' confinement, he gravely intimated 
his intention of taking a bath ; and he was eagerly reminded 
of what he had been more than once informed, that there 
Y/as a most comfortable bath-room on deck, quite at his daily 
service. That was not at all Yeh's idea of a bath. The 
cabin was given up to him and his domestics, and a small 
pan of boiling water. We all hoped that he had cleansed 
himself ; but when we saw him again he was weariug his 
old greasy unv/ashed jacket. 

Considerable alarm was at one time entertained as to 
whether the great man did not encourage a class of para- 
sites not usually tolerated by great men. Mr. Alabaster 
saw to his horror an tmknown, but most suspicious insect 
crawling within the sacred precincts of the captain's cabin. 
He pointed out the insect to Yeh, who looked at it v/itli 
immovable gravity, and said sententiously, " It is a louse." 
It was not by the mandarin's agency that the action of 
Peter Pindar's great epic was re-enacted on board the In- 
ftexihle. Yeh's retinue consists of a cook, a barber, two 
waiting servants, and a military attendant. This last person 
we, with our usual absurd practice of dignifying Chinamen 
with European titles, call an aide-de-camp. He is a military 
mandarin of the sixth degree. He is also a dirty fellow, 
doing menial offices about the person of his chief, and messing 
with the other servants upon the meats that go from his 
2 D 2 



404 CHINA. 

master's table. If he v/ere an EiiglisLraan, we slioiild call 
him at best a soldier servant, or an orderly. 

After Yeh had thus manifested his acquaintance with 
entomology, the "aide-de-camp" and the domestics were 
compelled to wash, and some strong hints were thrown out 
to their master. The washing was grumbled at as a 
tyranny, and the hints were thrown away ; so nothing was 
left but to hope almost against hope that the mandarin 
himself is free from vermin, and to continue to scrub the 
attendants. The southern Chinese are for the most part of 
cleanly habits ; but the northerns are dirty. Yeh is from 
Hu])eh, which is one of the five northern provinces. 

Yeh sleeps in a recess in the captain's cabin, which he 
prefers to a separate sleeping-berth. He goes to bed about 
eight o'clock, and while we are reading or writing, or playing 
chess, he sleeps the sleep of infancy — an unbroken slumber, 
apparentl}^ undisturbed by visions of widowed women or 
v/ailing orphans. This man-killer, after slaying his hundred 
thousand human beings, enjoys sweeter sleep than an inno- 
cent London alderman after a turtle dinner. So false are 
traditions ; so false are the remorseful scenes of Greek and 
English tragedies. 

But, although our great mandarin is at peace with his 
own Chinese conscience, he has an evident horror of his 
living countrymen. He has "lost face" with them, and the 
greatest fear he has is the being made an exhibition to a 
Chinese rabble. We were malicious enough to ask whether 
he would like to go to the Hongkong races. Pie answered, 
just as the father of a serious family might answer, that it 
never had been the custom of his family to go to races. 

The day before we started, many curious people came ofFto 
see him, and Yeh became very sulky. Sir John Bowring 
got very little out of his interview. He did not even re- 
ciprocate Sir John's compliment of asking him his age ; and 
when Sir John asked whether he could do anything for him, 
Yeh only remarked that Mr. Alabaster Avas there, and he 
v/ould tell him. The admiral was present at the same time. 
Yeh is very fond of the admiral, and spoke to him with 
more cordiality. The bishop of Victoria also sought an 
interviev/ j not wishing, however, to be introduced to him 



yeh's sea-sickness. 405 

by his official title, lest lie should be thought to be paying 
too much respect to such a man. The fear was ungrounded, 
for the Chinaman knows nothing of episcopal rank ; and 
if there is any profession for which a proud Chinese 
literate entertains a supreme contempt, it is for that of 
the priesthood of all faiths, Bhuddist emphatically included. 

On Monday, the 23rd of February, the Inflexible steamed 
out of Hongkong harbour, and Yeh might, if he had pleased, 
have taken his last look for some time of the shores of his 
native land. If he felt any of the bitterness of exile, he 
was successful in concealing it, for he was entirely occu- 
pied in smoking his pipe and settling himself comfort- 
ably. A fe\v minutes after, and we had rounded Green 
Island, and the steamer danced to the piping of the strong- 
north-west monsoon. I was on deck watching the familiar 
objects of the harbour as they receded, and thinking re- 
gretfully that some friendships which I most valued there 
might be dimmed by the strong line I had felt it my duty 
to take upon some public questions, when sounds came 
through the cabin skylight like the strains and groans of 
Etna. The pipe and the little cakes, flavoured potently 
with pork fat, even the frequent thimblefuls of samshu, 
had been unavailing to fortify the great stomach of the 
great mandarin. The " aide-de-camp " was incapable of aid ; 
the servants and the cook had crept into corners to die. 
Poor Captain Brooker's cabin was in an awful state, 

For three days this condition of things continued. Judging 
from the sounds, the viceroy might be throwing up his two 
provinces of Quangsi and Quangtung. It must be admitted, 
however, that he struggled manfully with his malady. To 
use his own expression, his stomach was excruciated and 
his bowels required nursing ; but he manifested all a China- 
man's courage of endurance. On the fourth day he even 
returned to his pipe, and required his slowly-recovering 
cook to prepare him breakfast. He does not love mutton 
— it is Tartar food ; he does not eat beef, for it is written 
by Confucius, " Thou shalt not slaughter the labouring ox." 
This is not a superstition, but an ethical and economical 
observance. It is ungrateful to slaughter the animal that 
j)roduce3 rice, and it is contrary to Chinese notions of good 



406 CHINA. 

policy to kill creatures that till the earth. Yeli does not 
drink milk, nor will lie eat biscuits prepared with milk ; 
but he explains that this is not because he is a Bhuddist, for 
that many who are not Bhuddists do not drink milk, while 
the Bhuddists of Mantchouria are fond of it. If — which 
I very much doubt— he is of any religion, he belongs to 
that higher sect of Bhuddists who are above all forms of 
abstinence or idol-worship, and place their devotion in in- 
tense inner aspirations for perfection. 

As he recovered from his sea-sickness, he grew more com- 
municative and conversational than he had ever been before. 
As we left Singapore harbour, he looked like a man who 
had a load removed from his mind. I believe his feeling 
was that he had got away for a time from his own country- 
men, and was no longer in danger of meeting the people in 
whose eyes he had " lost face." He now talked fluently 
upon every subject to which we led him ; and I shall best 
conve}^ his opinions by transcribing these conversations dis- 
cursively as I noted them. Let me remark here, once for 
all, that Mr. Alabaster is, so far as my experience goes, a 
unique instance of a youth who has learnt to converse 
fluently in Mandarin after only two years' study. In terms 
of philosophy and art, difficulties of translation must of 
necessity occur; but apart from these, I never hear the 
interpreter obliged to ask Yeh to repeat what he has said, 
and very rarely find that Yeh requires the interpreter to 
repeat. I consider myself very fortunate in my medium of 
conversation with this 2;rea.t Confucian. 

The topic upon which Yeh talks most freely is his success 
in putting down the rebellion in Qaangtung. He insists 
that there v/as no one chief of these rebels, and that their 
only objects were rape and robbery. 

He says that the persons executed by his order were over 
100,000, and he reluctantly admits that he was unable to 
extirpate the whole class. He is able to estimate the 
numbers he sent to execution, because he was obliged to 
make periodical reports to Pekin of the progress of the 
work of extermination. The ordinary rule of Chinese law 
is, that no criminal can be put to death without the special 
warrant of the emperor ; but this was an extraordinary case. 



yeh's account of kis executions. 407 

He was armed witli a general v/arraiit to destroj^ rebels, and 
lie reported his proceedings under it. He declares that no 
individual was put to death without being previously ex- 
amined by him. The course was this : — They v/ere iirst 
examined by the local authorities, then they were tried 
before the judge, then they went before the lieutenant- 
governor, and lastly they were brought before Yeh himself. 
He says that he acquitted a small proportion. Notwith- 
standing my repeated questions, he would not commit himself 
to any specific proportion. — " They were not many, for they 
were generally accused upon good evidence." 

I asked whether he ever spared any one on account of 
youth, or because she was a woman, or by reason of station 
or good character, or whether it was a mere question with 
him of innocence or guilt. The answer was — ^' I never 
spared the guilty." 

I asked what the nature of the evidence usually was. 

'•' We had our spies among them, and their neighbours 
informed." 

" Was not this liable to abuse, and might not sucli testi- 
mony be adduced for .purposes of extortion or revenge ?" — 
'• Impossible. They would have been afraid. Had I found 
such a case, I should have punished the witness and his wife 
and children." 

'•' Would you have put the wife and children of a per- 
JLired vdtness to death 1 " — "No." 

" Did you ever discover such cases ? " — " Occasionally, but 
very seldom. If they perjured themselves deeply, I cut 
their heads off, and inflicted minor penalties on their families." 

The treatment of European prisoners was a topic that 
required to be approached with great caution, or he would 
grunt or grin, and retire into silence. When he does talk 
upon this matter, he insists that no European was ever 
brought before him. They were buried, he says, in the 
malefactors' cemetery, outside the eastern gate, and marks 
were placed by which the local authorities can still point out 
the graves. I have sent a note of this statement to Mr. 
Parkes, and hope it may lead to an investigation that may 
clear up the mystery as to the identity of these persons, and 
may satisfy us as to the truth or falsehood of the story of the 



408 CHINA. 

poisonings.* To the latter I never dared allude. It would 
have been of no use. Yeh's talent for adroit lying amounts, 
as I shall hereafter have more special occasion to note, to 
high genius. It is only upon indifferent topics that his 
information is in the slightest degree trustworthy. 

We were very anxious to know whether Yeh is really a 
fatalist, but he fences with my questions. He undoubtedly 
does consult his Chinese almanack for the lucky day to shave 
his head, but it is not easy to ascertain from him whether he 
does so attaching any belief to such superstitions, or whether 
he merely follows a popular custom. If he believes in 
" luck," he certainly has the sense to be ashamed of it. He 
is also evidently aware that it is derogatory to the dignity 
of a high literate of the Han-lin-Yuan to lean too much on 
superstitious books, even those of Taouism or Bhuddism, 
owning thereby that the philosophy of Confucius and 
Mencius is not all-sufficient. 

I asked why, if the philosophy of Confucius was sufficient 
for all purposes, men became followers of Bhudda also. 

" There is one great universal truth, but it has many 
truths within it. The Taoli of Confucius is at one with the 
Taoli of Bhudda." 

"But Bhuddism was not known in China until long after 
the time of Confucius ] " — " The Taoli of Bhudda was in 
China, although men knew not the form." 

" Confucius kncAv nothing of the religion of Bhudda ? " — 
" The men of those days knew not the forms." 

" If the Taoli of Bhudda is good and necessary, why is it 
not included in the public examinations 1 " — " In ancient 
times it was not so." 

This reply is v/ith Yeh the ending of all controversy. I 
once tried to drive him out of it by saying that the custom 
he spoke of was only of the age of the Han dynasty, and 
that, even in our eyes, was comparatively modern. He 
became very sulky, and would not continue the conversation. 

Mr. Wade has found a great many divination schemes 
among the papers seized at the time of Yeh's capture. I 
asked him if he had cast any horoscopes with a view to fore- 
tell political events. He said " No." I then told him it 

* The graves have been identified, but the corpses had not been dis- 
interred when I last heard from Canton. 



yeh's hoeoscopes. 40^ 

•was understood that papers of this kind were among liis 
documents. Pie emphatically denied that this was possible. 
I said it was unfortunate, that some mistake had been made, 
for that these papers had been translated and reported to the 
British authorities, and would be looked upon as his. He said — 

'• I was always busy with official duties ; how could I 
have time for such things?" 

" Do people in China generally believe in them ?" — '• Some 
people among the Chinese believe in such things, and some 
do not." 

" What is your excellency's opinion?" — '- 1 can't tell you. 
Sometimes I believe in them, sometimes I do not. The 
English have no such customs, so I cannot make you com- 
prehend." 

''• On the contrary, we have such customs. With us the 
learned sometimes have recourse to divination as an amuse- 
ment ; but the ignorant and illiterate only really believe 
that events can be foretold by such schemes. Perhaps that 
may be the case also in China?" — " To some extent that is 
the case in China." 

As I was confident as to the fact of the horoscopes having 
been found, I returned to this point. He grew rather 
angry, and repeated : — 

''• My hours were occupied with official business ; how on 
earth could I find time to cast horoscopes ? It is true that 
fortune-tellers have been sent to me on various occasions: such 
things have been, but they never influenced public affairs." 

" The finding of these horoscopes has led some persons to 
the opinion that they influenced you to neglect the defence 
of Canton V 

Tlie answer very emphatically given vv^as " No." 

I ventured one other question, for I felt that I should 
never get him on the topic again. The answer was, " Such 
things were never considered in public business." 

The bishop of Victoria, after his visit to Yeh, sent off a 
Chinese Bible and some tracts -wrapped in a newspaper, 
begging Captain Brooker to present them. The captain did 
so. Yeh said he had long ago read the Bible ; it was a good 
book — all books of that kind were good — they tend to purify 
the heart, as do the Bhuddist and the Taouist books. He 
begged of Captain Brooker to put the parcel by for him 



410 CHIXA. 

until some convenient season. This time never came, but 
on the fifth day of our voyage Mr. Alabaster reproduced the 
package, and begged to have his opinion upon some of the 
tracts. Yeh opened one of them with an evident effort of 
politeness, but soon closed it with a slight grimace. He had 
apparently been shocked by some solecism of style. Mr. 
Alabaster proposed to put the Bible and tracts among some 
Bhuddist books which Yell's father had sent on board for 
him ; but Yeh, affecting to misunderstand this proposition, 
replied, " Yes, I think it will be convenient that you replace 
them in the captain's drawer." Mr. Alabaster continuing 
to turn them over, Yeh got up from his chair and said, " If 
you will not put them up in the packet as I received them, 
I will do so myself." There was no more to be done. The 
books were returned to their envelope and consigned to the 
oblivion of one of the lockers, and the mandarin looked 
pleased at being relieved from an unpleasant importunity. 

This was the only time we attempted to force the atten- 
tion of the old dignitary to this matter. Upon one other 
occasion we invited him towards the subject by asking him 
why, since Bhuddism was introduced into China in the Han 
dynasty, Christianity should not be introduced in the reign 
of the sixth emperor of the Mantchou Tartar dynasty. 
" Lilai nieiyu cheko yaugtsu" (" Hitherto this has not been 
so "). It is the same answer as you constantly get from 
Chinamen of Hongkong in Canton English — " Before time 
no catchee." 

This is the answer with which he always terminates a 
discussion, when he finds it taking the form of an argument. 
We then always leave him undistui'bed to his own occupa- 
tions. These are to smoke his pipe, to choose out the rotten 
oranges from his large store, and distribute them among his 
domestics, carefully replacing the sound fruit ; to give direc- 
tions about his dinner, or to expostulate with the captain that 
if he and his officers will not eat some portion of his Chinese 
cakes, they will only be spoiled. 

He never reads, and he very seldom inquires. He has 
condescended to inquire concerning the French, w^hether 
they are not a nation who drink a good deal of coffee and 
make a great deal of wine, and he seems quite satisfied with 



yeh's ignorance of geography. 411 

this amount of information concerning the most polite people 
of the world. He is fond, also, of exhibiting his stock of 
quack medicines to Mr. Cotton, the ship's surgeon.. Report 
says, although we have been unable to get Yeh to tell us 
this, that the viceroy's father was an apothecary. The son 
manifests great interest in European surgery. The most 
liberal admission I ever heard him make was upon this 
subject. Mr. Cotton asked him whether the Chinese 
surgeons study anatomy. He answered " ISo ; it would be 
impossible to do so in China." Mr. Cotton replied that in 
former times it vvas so with our people. Their objection to 
dissection was so great that surgeons were obliged to studj- 
by stealth ; but now people were so alarmed at having to be 
attended by surgeons who had not studied the human body, 
that the practice is rendered legal 

Yeh answered, that he could only say the people would 
not endure such a thing in China. 

" But do you think it objectionable ? " — '•' My individual 
opinion is, that dissection for knowledge-sake is not vrrong." 

He has asked also from time to time questions about the 
distances from point to point, the situation of Calcutta, a,nd 
the distance to England. He remarked also, when he saw 
me writing with a gold pen, " What extravagance !" He 
generally, however, declines all argument, and believes no 
explanation. When I explained that we use gold pens, not 
because that metal is more valuable, but because it is more 
flexible, and therefore better adapted to the purpose than 
any other metal, this reply only elicited an unpleasant 
laugh, vv^hich in its different modifications sounds sometimes 
like an angry sneer, sometimes like an exclamation of 
" Fudge ! " or '• Humbug !" When Mr. Alabaster told him 
that at Calcutta he would find among the state captives the 
last of the ancient emperors of India and a king of a great 
Indian kingdom, Yeh laughed his bitterest and most in- 
credulous sneer. When I told him that if v/e were going 
to England instead of Calcutta, his voyage would extend over 
45,000 lei, and that at every spot where the ship cast anchor 
he would find a British governor, British soldiers, and the 
British flag, he unmistakably laughed "Fudge !" 

We asked him one day what his estimate was of the 



412 CHINA. 

difference between the Englisli and Cliinese cLaracter ; lie 
said " The Englisli are ' Ning-kan' — ready and able to do 
anything. The Chinese must have teaching (^ ying-kai yn 
chiao')." This he explained to mean that they must have 
precedent. The first, he said, was a i/ood quality, but the 
latter was not a bad one. 

He once manifested some desire to know something of 
the history of British India. AVhether his curiosity was 
awakened by religious or political reasons, he did not explain ; 
but Mr. Alabaster offered to make a compact with him to 
read together a short history of India, if Yoh Avould agree to 
read with him the four sacred books of China. Here is a 
chance which all the sinologues of Europe and China may 
envy this young man. I doubt, however, whether it will be 
much to our advantage to teach Yeli the history of British 
India. Suppose we tell him that about a hundred and fifty 
years ago the head of the Mongol race ruled over the great 
peninsula of Hindostan, disturbed in his dominion only by 
occasional rebellions and by disobedient satraps ; that some 
humble English merchants had obtained leave to build a 
few factories on the seaboard, and a few French troops had 
occupied some islands on the coast and one station on the 
mainland ; that the English had at this time no idea of any 
territorial conquest, and would have treated any such sug- 
gestion as the most absurd of calumnies ; that just 110 years 
ago the French opened their eyes to a career of conquest, 
while the English were still suing for privileges as humble 
traders ; that thirteen years later saw the French driven out 
of all their conquests by the poor traders, who, without any 
ambition on their part, were forced into a path of conquest, 
winning battles in self-defence, overrunning kingdoms con- 
trary to their own wishes, forced by circumstances, against 
which they vainly struggled and ceaselessly complained, to 
supplant the Great Mogul and become the suzerain of all 
India. This quick succession of strange facts might suggest 
a parallel to the mind of Yeh. He might even be so pre- 
judiced as to imagine some coincidence between the present 
position of the English and Russians in China, and that of 
the English and French in early days in India. 

Yeh; hov/ever, is a practiser of what I am so evil-minded 



YEII'S OPINIOX OF FP.EE TEADE. 413 

a-s to think is the real great Taoli of China — " Procrastina- 
tion is the soul of business." He puts oil' India and the 
four books from day to da}'-, and Mr. Alabaster importunes 
in vain. He was for several succeeding days engaged in 
deep consideration whether he should allow Mr. Cotton to 
cut off a wart which disfigures his very well-shaped hand. 

I mentioned to him the fact that the Shanghai custom- 
house pays annually tv/o and a half millions of taels to the 
imperial treasury. Careful not to commit himself, he merely 
observed, '■' It is good." I added that this must be a great 
benefit to the emperor. He said the imperial treasury 
was not wanting in mone}^ I produced some Pehin Gazettes, 
from which it appeared that the emperor was of a diflerent 
opinion. He grunted. I mentioned that the imperial 
troops, who had just obtained possession of Chekiang Foo, 
had been maintained entirely by the Shanghai customs. He 
had not heard of it ; it was not in his provinces. I drew 
an inference that a greater facility of access v»^ould increase 
commerce and be beneficial to the imperipJ treasury and 
the Chinese people. He did not agree. For once he con- 
descended to argue. He said the opening of the four ports 
had increased competition, and competition disarranges all 
things. In former times, he said, the foreigners imported 
good v/atches, but since competition had been allowed no 
more good watches had been imported. He himself had a 
very good watch before the ports were open. He lost it, 
and was obliged to buy another ; it was always out of repair. 
I innocently attempted to explain that it depended upon the 
consumer whether competition produced cheapness or quality, 
but was met only by an incredulous grin. 

Sometimes I ventured to talk about the opium matters, 
but there is very little to be got by leading him to talk upon 
affairs of public policy. He is not only very naturally deter- 
mined to say nothing that may be remembered against him, 
but he lies with an aplomb and oily placidity which make one's 
face burn, remembering that it is a man of high office and 
great learning who is emitting the ridiculous falsehood. 

We must ever recollect, in dealing with the Chinese, that 
the shibboleth of Western chivalry — the scorn of a lie as a 
cowardly and dishonouring thing — is to them unknown. 



414 CHINA. 

Yell most usually expresses liis disbelief by a grunt or a 
giin, but be has no hesitation in giving you the lie direct. 
Once or twice he did this in a very coarse way, after asking a 
question about some matter of fact occurring on deck. The 
Englishmen about him, with every feeling for his position as 
a prisoner, were not inclined to endure this, and he was 
told that it was considered by our nation as the gravest 
discourtesy to use such language. He could not understand 
this. " I don't intend to offend you," he said, '• but you say 
it is, and I say it is not ; that is all." It was evident that he 
himself cared no more for being discovered in a falsehood 
than for being beaten at a game of chess. 

Thus, when I told him that proclamations had been issued 
levying duties upon opium, he said, "That is not so." I pro- 
duced copies of the proclamation. He simply remarked that 
this was out of his provinces, and he had never heard of it ; 
he believed that the emperor knew nothing about it. I 
regretted to hear that high Chinese officials put forth pro- 
clamations and received duties without the sanction of the 
emperor. He said that this was impossible. I asked 
whether these duties ever reached the emperor's treasury, or 
whether they were embezzled 1 He said that embezzlement 
by a public officer was an impossibility in China. I produced 
half a dozen Pekin Gazettes, which recounted such embezzle- 
ments and referred the crime to the proper board. He said 
that these instances were not within his viceroyalty. I 
asked how it happened that public officers receiving almost 
nominal salaries made large fortunes. He said that no man 
in office ever did m.ake a large fortune. I read to him from 
Williams's Middle Kingdoin the emperor's rescript and the 
estimate of the wealth of Duke Ho (one hundred and 
live millions of dollars). He said this v/as before his time. 

He was never in the smallest degree disconcerted by being 
directly contradicted by a public document, and I ventured 
upon no subject upon which I was not well fortified by Pehin 
Gazettes. It is true he never disputed the authority of a 
public document. That v/ould have been to damage the 
official infallibility. It was a curious spectacle to see this 
Chinese mandarin, versed for twenty-five years in all the 
iniquity of official corruption, enjoying at this moment its 



yeh's assertion of official pusity. 415 

proceeds in the sliape of an unlimited credit upon Ho^vqim's 
house for any moneys he may think fit to spend, yet gravely 
asserting the incorruptibility of all Chinese magistrates, and 
even rf^asoning upon this most notorious falsehood as an 
axiom so thoroughly true that no fact inconsistent Avith it 
could be true, and every proposition contradictory to it must 
be absurd. To talk v;ith Yeh upon such subjects v»^as of no 
possible use for the jDurpose of information, although it was 
psychologically interesting to see a great Chinese gentleman 
shifting and shuffling, and not at all conscious that it wan 
disgraceful to abandon as a discovered falsehood propositions 
which he had just before asserted as undoubted truths. 

We traversed the Bay of Bengal upon an unruffled sea, 
and Yeh was comfortable, in his stomach, and during some 
portion of each day ready for conversation. One subject 
upon vvhich it was never difficult to draw him out was that 
of his own career. 

He tells us that he is fifty-two years old ; that he is the 
son of a public officer nov.^ eighty years old, who was secre- 
tary of the Board of "War (of which Yeh is now president) for 
fourteen years, and who has now for some years retired. 

He recounted the different high offices he has held. The 
list is too numerous for insertion, but it includes every kind 
of judicial and political duty. He declares that he owed his 
first appointment as prefect entirely to his success in the 
public examinations. This gave me an opportunity of 
inquiring into th^^ nature of these examinations, about Vvdiich 
so much has been written and so little is known. 

Yeh has taken four degrees ; he has passed seven examina- 
tions. In three he was unsuccessful, in the other four he wa& 
successful. In the last his distinction was so great that he 
was named the second wrangler of the empire — he was 
No. 2 on the list of all the candidates who passed at that 
imperial examination. 

He says that the first examination is held in the depart- 
mental city, and consists of one day's work upon essays on 
the true doctrine of the four ancient books. 

The second examination is held in the provincial city, and 
lasts three days. The first day is appropriated to the four 
sacred books, the second to the five classics, the third to the 



416 CHINA. 

history of Cliina. This is all that ever is required. I asked 
Avhether the history of Mantchonria, or Thibet, or Japan, 
was included. He said, " No ; the history of China." I told 
him we had heard that the examination comj)rised practical 
matters, such as the science necessary to restrain rivers 
within their channels. He said, " We are only expected to 
speak Taoli — to talk true doctrine." 

" Nothing about natural history, or trade, or the foreign 
relations of China ? " — " We are only expected to speak Taoli. 
The only thing required is to explain right principles, vvhich 
existed at the beginning of all things." 

The examination for the third degree is held at Peldn : 
it lasts nine days, and the requirements are the same as for 
the second degree, only the jR-ohciency must be greater. 

The fourth examination is held at Pekin, and generally 
in the palace before the emperor himself, assisted l)y the 
members of the college of the Forest of Pencils (Han-lin- 
Yuan). This examination also continues for nine days. It 
•embraces all the ancient books, — meaning thereby only the 
Confucian books, for the Bhuddist and Taouist books are 
excluded, — and also correct writing and official style. 

It v\'as probably proficiency in official-paper writing which 
gained Yeh his high degree. He practised this talent with 
great eifect upon Parkes and Bowring, but was not in a 
happy vein when he wrote his replies to Mr. Peed and Lord 
Elgin and Baron Gros. 

I asked, " Your excellency was judge of Yunnan for four 
years. Did 3^ou pass any examination in the Ta Tsing Loo 
Lee (the Chinese code) before you took upon you that office ?" 
— '•' No ; I told you before we are only expected to speak 
Taoli." 

" Then did your excellency never study Chinese law ? " — 
" Never." 

" Did you never read the Chinese code ? " — " No." 

" Did not your want of reading in Chinese law make your 
judicial duties onerous"?" — '' No." 

" Perhaps you were assisted by good secretaries?" — "Some- 
times I was ; sometimes not." 

"Is there any class in China who know the codef — " Those 
•who fail in oar higher examinations often apply themselves 



yeh's ignohance of Chinese dialects. 417 

to study law and other matters. Tliey sometimes become 
our secretaries." 

" Is it a proper question to ask your excellency liow much 
you paid your secretaries ? " — " TJsually a hundred taels a 
month (33^.)." 

" And what did they make by perquisites ?" — "300 or 400 
taels more." He afterwards withdrew this reply^ and sub- 
stituted " 30 or 40 " j but this was an after-thought. The 
first was the true estimate. 

" Your excellency will excuse my importunity, for we are 
talking upon matters foreign to our Western ideas. May I 
believe that a man who understands the four books and the 
five classics is thereby, and without any other study, fitted 
for every public office in China'?" — "From the very commence- 
ment of the Chinese empire, it has been the custom to depend 
entirely on the four books." 

" Do you never, upon becoming an officer, read up the 
duties of the office ?" — "The high officers often use secretaries 
to look up such matters." 

I took up a Mantchou book. 

" Can your excellency speak or read Mantchou ? " — " No." 

'•' Nor the Cantonese dialect ? " — " No." 

"You speak your own native dialect of Hupeh 'I " — " No. I 
was educated at Pekin, as my ancestors were, and I speak 
only the language of Pekin." 

It would be impertinent in me to point the moral of this 
conversation. It tells more of the inner workings of the 
Chinese system than all that has hitherto been written on 
the subject. 

The question remains, what is this " Taoli," which is the 
■sole knowledge of the governijig classes of China 1 I do not 
ask what is the exact English word which will convey the 
meaning of the compound Chinese word. It is of small 
importance to humble practical inquirers whether we are to 
translate it " true doctrine," " truth," or " reason," or the 
^'ultimate principle," or "the way of the universe," or "the 
rule of right." All this has been sufficiently fought out by 
dreamy sophists and scholiast pedants. My inquiry is whe- 
ther this word " Taoli " is a term comprehending a cycle 
of knowledge which will tend to make the student an 

2 E 



418 CHINA. 

honest man, an intelligent officer, and an efficient magis- 
trate. 

I look in vain to all the European books on Chinese phi- 
losophy for an answer to this question. " Absolute truth," 
or " the ultimate principle," conveys no tangible idea to the 
European mind. If we attempt to read the four books by 
the light of mere common sense, we utterly fail to deduce 
any system of philosophy, or even of ethics, from them. I have 
toiled through the Latin translation of*' Ykioig," and find it 
as unintelligible to me as a sheet of algebraic signs would be 
to a man who has not learnt their meaning. I have no doubt, 
however, that it is quite capable of explanation ; and I suspect 
that, under the tuition of a learned Chinese doctor, these to 
me nonsensical apophthegms about " the dragon " would 
resolve themselves into some fine-spun speculative system of 
cosmogony, producing itself in some fanciful moral philo- 
sophy, some subtle web of objective truths, hung upon some 
ridiculous aesthetic conceits. I believe that, stolid, gainseek- 
ing, and matter-of-fact as they appear to us, there is an 
ctiaQriGiQ in the mind of a Chinaman, that it is more generally 
diffused than we imagine, and that it contributes greatly to 
the marvellous conceit of the national character. I believe 
there is in this people a habit of dreamy cogitation upon a 
self-generating system, and upon abstract truths, deducible 
from what they assume to be the laws of the universe, and 
that they consider this the highest occupation of the mind 
of man. They imagine that they alone have this faculty, 
and that the barbarians, who are without it, are scarcely 
thinking creatures. We see this cropping out at every foot- 
step in their towns. Go into a shoemaker's shop, and you 
find his walls adorned with mysterious characters — very large 
golden characters at top, and scrolls of smaller writing pen- 
dent below. You expect that this large character means the 
man's name, or, at any rate, the sign of his shop ; but the 
Chinese scholar at your side informs you that it means, 
" May the pencil and the ink flow fragrantly." You continue 
to imagine that the smaller characters mean, " Boots and 
shoes mended on the shortest notice." No ; they mean, " Ten 
thousand imities to all eternity." These things are nearly 
universal in China. The examples I have just cited I take 



WHAT 13 '• TAOLI 2 " 419 

from twenty which I noted at Singapore. I believe that 
every Chinaman above the condition of a coolie talks Taoli, 
or affects to talk Taoli, in his little way — not with that 
application of an affectation of learning to his trade which 
would induce an English shoemPvker to register his " podoso- 
kyan " pumps, but from real reverence for Taoli. 

This preface is not to introduce any theory of my o^;\^n 
upon the subject of Taoli — although, of course, I have one — 
but only to explain the importance of getting Yeh to talk 
upon the subject. 

" What does your excellency mean by Taoli ? — What you 
ought to do is Taoli ; what you ought not to do is not Taoli. 

" Has Taoli no more extended meaning 1 — Taoli has the 
most comprehensive meaning — it comprehends everything. 

" Does Taoli teach of a Creator ? — There are many 
Taoli. There is heaven's Taoli, and earth's Taoli, and man's 
Taoli. 

" Are these Taoli distinct 1 — !N"o ; they are all parts of 
one Taoli. 

" Can you explain to me what yon mean by Heaven's 
Taoli 1 — If the sun shines out it becomes hot. 

" It has relation only to the material heaven 1 — ' Tien ' 
means properly only the material heaven, but it also means 
* Shangti ' (Upper Spirit) ; for, as it is not lav/ful to use his 
name lightly, we name him by his residence, which is in Tien. 

" One of our Christian sects uses the word ' Tien-chu.' 
Is that a Chinese word 1 — It is not a word known to the 
Chinese language. 

" Your excellency used the word ' Shangti.' What does 
that word mean 1 Our people dispute about it. — Shangti 
is a Shun, but Shun is not necessarily Shangti, for the Shun 
are very many. 

" Have Shangti and Taoli any connection 1 — When you 
discourse about Shangti you discourse about Taoli. Shangti 
and Taoli are one and the same thing. 

"Is Taoli a corporeal being? — In things that are done 
by it, it is a thing having body ; but when you discourse of 
it, it is a thing having no body ; it is a principle. 

" Has that body any visible form ? — No ; it has no form. 
Different people have notions that it has different forms. 
2 E 2 



420 CHINA. 

" And do those people worsliip those forms ? — Yes. 

" Has Shangti any visible form 1 — Shangti is produced by 
the Yin and Yang, the Tai-chi — the male and female prin- 
ciple. It has no visible form. It has never been represented 
under any form. 

" Were there men in existence before this jDroduction of 
the Shangti 1 — There were men. 

"Is there authority for this? — That is what everybody 
says from ancient time ; it is said so in the books. 

" Is Shangti Confucian 1 — It is hinted at by Confucins, 
but not explained. Shangti is a Taouist Taoli. 

" Which is superior, Tai-chi or Shangti 1 — Tai-chi. 

"So that the Upper Spirit, or ruler, is only a created 
being, emanating from the ultimate laws of nature ? — Yes. 

" What produced Tai-chi? — It came of itself" (Tzu-jan- 
rhjan.) 

I deduce from this that the Roman Catholics have chosen 
the best word for God. They have made a new word, 
whereas our Protestant missionaries have adopted a word 
known to the Chinese as the name of a created being. 

I asked, " Has Tai-chi any form 1 — Its form is a circle 
divided into two parts, male and female. 

" Has any one seen Tai-chi 1 — No. 

" How, then, do you know that it is of that form 1 — Men 
have agreed to represent it by that form." 

The Confucian philosophy, therefore, recognizes only nature 
self-produced, active, but will-less and unintelligent. The 
disciples of Confucius tolerate the idea of the existence of 
ruling spirits born of the operations of nature — the creatures, 
and not the creators, of the universe. In this way they are 
able to engraft Taouism and Buddhism upon Confucianism.* 

When Yeh turns to the east, and remains in contempla- 
tion, he is adoring nature, and not the spiritual Creator of 
nature. He is contemplating nature in her best aspect. 

I was anxious to learn something of the practical working 
of this system of philosophy. 

" If a man who has learnt to talk Taoli, does not do Taoli, 

* I am told that when the Germans read this conversation in the 
columns of the Times, they exclaimed with astonishment, "These Chinese 
are nearly as far advanced as we are ! " 



yeh's ethics. 421 

does any punishment arise to him ? — Such a man would be 
very bad. 

" Would Shangti punish him 1 — The things of heaven, 
how can we tell ? 

'• Does your excellency recollect a saying of Confucius, 
' That which you would not that another should do to you, 
tliat do not to him 1 ' — It is Confucian Taoli. I forget the 
exact expression in the four books. 

'• In our Western Taoli we have a more extended Taoli, 
which commands a duty as well as forbids an offence. It 
rims, ' Do unto others everything that you would wish 
others to do to you.' Is there anything equivalent to this 
in your four books 1 — Such is not said in the four books ? 

" Is not benevolence spoken of in the four books ? — Yes. 

" What is benevolence 1 — If you desire men to love you, 
you must love them. If you do not wish men to hate you, 
you must not hate them. 

" Would not the saying of Confucius before referred to 
forbid punishment to criminals 1 — The Taoli does not mean, 
that. 

" Or revenging an injury ? — That would depend on the 
man. 

" Would it not be wrong ? — Yes. 

" Does not this Taoli give an advantage to bad people 
who commit injuries? — The knowledge of Taoli is neverthe- 
less the better. 

" Why ? — The object of our wishes is to come to a know- 
ledge of Taoli. 

'• Are murder, robbery, and adultery forbidden in the four 
books ? — Not directly ; but it results from the Taoli. 

'' If these doctrines are influential in China, how does it 
become necessary to punish so many ? — The good are in the 
majority ; it is impossible for all to be good. 

'' You have spoken of benevolence as a part of Taoli ; is 
the benevolence you speak of merely a condition of the 
mind, or is it a course of action dictated from within? — 
Benevolence is Taoli — Taoli is benevolence." 

He vras evidently getting tired of a lecture which had in- 
terested him at its commencement. It was necessary to 
drop the subject. We made many subsequent attempts to 



422 CHINA. 

talk witli him on the same subject, hut he had evidently 
reconsidered the matter, and had made up his mind to 
give us no further information. 

On a day subsequent to our last conversation we referred 
to a previous conversation which had been interrupted, and 
said, — 

" Your excellency said the other day that it was not by 
your will that the English were excluded from Canton city. 
— It was the will of the emperor and the people. 

"Who are the people ? — The hundred surnames. 

'^ Not only the gentry 1 — The feeling was not only that of 
the inhabitants of the city, but of the villages all round 
about. 

" What was that feeling based upon?^That you must ask 
the people, you must not ask me. 

" There is no demonstration of such a feeling now 1 — I 
know nothing about that. 

"When Captain Pym, the captain of the police, goes 
about the city, the people come to him and say, ' We are 
glad to see you here, you preserve our property.' " — No 
answer. 

" Does your excellency understand the two systems of 
collecting duties as in exercise at Canton and Shanghai, and 
w^ould you think fit to give an opinion upon them. — I do 
not know." 

He returned of his own accord to the Canton topic. 

" It was not my city ; how could I let you in 1 

" But the treaty was express ? — I do not remember." 

I only cite this conversation to note that, although Yeh 
is willing, and indeed anxious, to have it reported that he 
adheres to the transparent fables he put forth in his state 
papers, yet he will enter into no discussion upon them. 

He afterwards added of his own accord : — 

*' I did make preparations.* A man would have no sense 

* In the Peldn Gazette of July 26, we find a note from Yeh to the 
emperor, stating, "in continuation of previous reports" (not contained 
in the Gazettes), that he has attended to the barbarian business, and 
collected soldiers from all quarters, summoned the marines, put the 
fleet in order, and got ready an immense amount of military materiel. 
He previously informed the empei-or that 300,000 taels had been sent 
in from the Canton custom-house to defray the military expenses, and 



yeh's affectation of apathy. 423 

wlio did not. It ^vas not that my preparations were insuf- 
ficient, nor that my soldiers were cowardly, nor that the 
officers were inefficient, but only because your guns are so 
tremendous (li-hai)." 

One night Captain Brooker beat to night-quarters, and 
we went down to forewarn Yeh, lest he should suffer by 
being startled from sleep by the sound of heavy guns. He 
and his servant were already up and inquiring. They had 
heard the sudden bustle upon deck. Having been told that 
the men were going to exercise with the great guns, he 
quietly turned in again. He actually affected to be fast 
asleep while the 681b. pivot-gun was blazing away just over 
his head, and the broadsides were shaking the ship from 
stem to stern. He had the impudence to declare next 
morning that he had slept quite through the firing. 

One day, after he had been sitting fanning himself for 
seven hours without saying a word, or even smoking a pipe, 
I asked him whether it did not disconcert him to see every 
one else around him engaged in some occupation. He said, 
" It did not surprise him. He knew that the English were 
always busy ; but such was not the Chinese custom," 

I asked him why he did not smoke. He said, " The hot 
principle is in the ascendant." 

There is in the day of these blue tropical seas one hour of 
beauty, when the plain of waters is just heaving to the light 

subsequently had given notice of 288,292 taels and 2 mace from the 
Chau-kiau salt revenues for the same purpose ; to all of which the 
imperial reply has been received, " We agree to it." Yeh now adds 
that, as the barbarian matters are not yet settled, the current expenses 
w?ll still be very heavy. Should the present supplies be inadequate, it 
will be necessary, from the grave importance of the affair, to make all 
possible preparation (to meet the emergency). "I have already," he 
says, '^ consulted with the different officers, who all acknowledge that 
they have largely shared in the imperial favour, and that in these times 
of extreme difficulty they ought to exert their utmost strength in 
expression of their gratitude, without daring to look for aught in retura 
(in the way of future honour and emolument). Accordingly, we have 
unitedly contributed 45,000 taels for the above purpose, which sum has 
been deposited in the general military office, that it may be at hand 
when required for the barbarian business. Of this matter it behoves 
me duly to inform you, and all the particulars of each subscription will 
be found in a separate note." His majesty having examined the papers, 
replies, *' It is on record." 



424 CHINA. 

head breeze, and tlie only visible object is tbe red, round 
sun, falling down the western heavens so rapidlv that it 
seems at last to drop, and quench in the reddened waters. 
Our captain chooses this cool healthy moment to put the 
men through their exercise ; and Yeh, full of dinner, 



waddles upon deck and sits in a big bamboo chair, with his 
two attendants behind them. What a wild turmoil of well- 
regulated confusion immediately takes place on board the 
Infleodhle 1 Mr. Beavan, tlie first lieutenant, is dictating an. 
interminable series of manoeuvres, more rapidly, I believe, 
than man ever before talked ; three hundred men are in. 
perpetual motion, moving in every different direction, bat 
with purpose in their heads and speed in their hands and 
feet. In a few seconds the naked ship is clad in canvas. 
Another order, and, before the expanded sails can feel the 
gently opposing zephyr, she is again naked to her spars. 
Then a whistle, and a hoarse boatswain's call, and the bees 
swarm again. In a moment every gun is manned. Every 
man in that straining crowd seems to have a special work 
to do, knows it, and does it. Handspikes are worked with 
a will, the bluejackets bending to the labour as though a 
real enemy were at our yardarm. The broadside guns are 
run in and out like children's gocarts, and the huge pivot- 
guns are spun round as though they were dummies of cork 
instead of mountains of cast iron. But the captain's sharp 
eye is not always satisfied, and ever and anon comes a voice 
from the paddle-box, awarding extra drill to No. 2 or No. 5 
of some designated gun for not being smart enough or for 
being in his wrong place. 

What is Yeh doing all this time % Is he marking this 
orderly energy, this discipline, this zeal of art, this heartiness 
of work, this scene of a multitude in motion with one 
object, and is he pondering over the lesson % Not at all. 
Two middies, hidden by the awning from the eye of the 
captain, are skylarking together, and the bigger one has just 
forced his smaller comrade, breech foremost, into the tub of 
the log-reel. Yeh is slyly watching those scapegraces 
through the corner of his thin eyes, and when the young- 
gentleman goes souse into the full tub, he chuckles, but 
immediately turns away his head, to hide the undignified 



YEH UPON DECK. 425 

enjoyment. Then in a moment it is night. Twenty minutes 
after the sun is down, nothing can be seen but the tall wind- 
sails glancing to and fro like ghosts in the gloaming. Yeh 
has gone down to drink tea and sleep ; remembering, as I 
believe, nothing of what he saw on deck, except only the 
whimsical face of the " small boy " who was forced back- 
wards into the tub of water. 

On the ninth day of our voyage from Singapore we 
sighted the two pilot brigs which lie out of sight of land, 
but gave notice of our approach to the Sandheads. TJien, 
having taken a pilot on board and pursued our course for 
some hours, a distant streak of red sandy coast-line (such as 
we may see on some of our own eastern coasts, but still 
more like the first glimpse of Egypt from the Mediterranean) 
vouched the land of Ind. Yeh was told this — and he went 
to bed. 

ISText morning we steamed up the muddy Hooghly, with 
its low green banks like Essex, or like the shores of the 
mouth of the E.hine— if those lands would only grow a few 
palm-trees among their other foliage. I tried to interest 
Yeh in the customs of the Hindoos, and he listened so far 
as to remark that the drowning of aged parents in this 
river was " a strange Taoli." He had heard of the Ganges, 
and thought it might be true that in the Han dynasty 
water might have been brought from this river for the 
coronation of the Chinese emperors; but, "in learning the 
history of China, he had not attended to such trivial 
matters," I answered, " We Westerns have a proverb that 
whatever is worth doing is worth doing thoroughly." He 
thought for a moment, and said, " That is not a Chinese 
Taoli." He had never heard that the Ganges was a sacred 
river. I talked to him about it with the hope of inducing 
him to go upon deck and look at it. He sat and fanned 
himself in the cabin, immovable. 

Some of us were not sorry that he would not come on 
deck. The distant approach to the City of Palaces is not 
prepossessing. The river contracts almost to the dimensions 
of our Thames at Mortlake. Though the palms are still 
beautiful, the fiat landscape wants relief; occasionally a 
great, square, brick-built, window-pierced factory — owns 



426 CHINA. 

brother to a dozen I could pick out in Derby — appears 
liorrid in the sun glare. A factory is not a picturesque 
object even in the glens of Glossop — it always suggests Lard 
work and close breathing ; and here, in scorching India, 
that idea must be abhorrent even to the Chinese unities. 
The bungalows come in sight higher up, but the stains 
of mildew upon their white plaster pillars hint of dis- 
repair. That dead Hindoo floating past with four carrion 
birds perched upon him, driving their heavy beaks into the 
corruption, does not suggest absolute security and good 
order. Yeh would think of the Canton river heavy with 
dead bodies after one of his great haU%ies up above. 

Yeh, however, sees none of these things ; everybody, even 
the stew^ard, seems to think it a shame that a man should 
miss the first sight of India, and little stratagems are tried 
to make him look. Once an exclamation made him turn his 
eyes upon a bungalow that was visible through a little port- 
hole opposite to him. Mr. Alabaster asked him what he 
thouoht of it. " He was not thinkinsj about it at all." 
There he sat ; not now like a statue of Buddha, but a flabby 
mass of greasy, discoloured nightshirt. 

At last, he was left quite alone, and — victory ! — one of 
the shipboys comes up and tells us that " the governor " has 
climbed up and is peering through the stern pyrts. Let him 
peep in peace. If he were not a great lump of mean artifice, 
he would come on deck like a man, and admire the glories 
of this great city. He might learn something by looking at 
Garden Keach, so crowded with great ships that such vessels 
of war as the Shannon, the Pearl, and the Roebuck have to 
be sought for. He would see a sight quite new to Chinese 
eyes in that great park which comes down to the river quay, 
a park larger than our Hyde Park, and intersected with 
rides and drives broad as Rotten Row ; with monuments to 
Ochterlonies and Prinseps and Bentincks, and other names 
honoured in the East ; and with its three sides of forts and 
palaces. 

In Fort William, which occupies the hither side that 
strikes the river, so trim in its green embrasures, so white in 
its lines of barracks, so formidable with its heavy guns and 
zigzag ditches, he might note the difierence between a bar- 



YEH's peep at CALCUTTA. . 427 

barlan and a Chinese fortification. Tlie distant dome of 
Government House only suggests the magnitude of the palace 
that occupies the opposite boundary of the park ; but some- 
body would have told him that the far away and long drawn 
line of great and lofty edifices^ all columns and green veran- 
dahs, parallel to the river, are the private residences of 
merchants and civil servants, and that these last have earned 
for Calcutta the name of the City of Palaces. Yeh, how- 
ever, thinks it more to his dignity to peep stealthily out of 
the stern ports, hoping that he has cozened his captors into 
the belief that he has no sentiment but that of sublime 
indifference both to them and to their creations. 

So soon as the Inflexible dropped her anchor, Major 
Herbert, to whose care Yeh had been assigned, came on 
board with a retinue of red-vested Hindoos, — a glare of 
scarlet which much impressed the vulgar Chinamen. The 
old mandarin, however, was not to be caught. He received 
the major in his greasy coat, went on with his dinner, replied 
to his many bows with a carefully modulated curtsy, and 
decided that it would take three days to make his prepara- 
tions for disembarking. 

This morning at daybreak Yeh landed. He is located for 
the present in Fort William, but a convenient house is being 
furnished for him some little way out of the city. Before he 
went he presented Captain Brooker with a written certificate 
of his presence and good treatment on board the Inflexible. 
This was done in a grave official manner, and Yeh, no doubt, 
thinks it a most valuable document. He is now in the best 
place in the whole world to teach a mandarin a useful lesson. 
The Calcutta people seem to have a very general contempt 
for most things, but a special contempt for China. The 
indifference which Yeh laboriously feigns, they honestly feel. 
Yeh would be a lion in London ; he will not attract more 
notice than a five-legged poodle in India. 



428 



CHAPTER XXXIIL 

YEH AT CALCUTTA. 

Converaatious with Mr. Layard — Contempt for Indian Potentates, and 
for Company's Servants — Yeh takes to Reading the Debates — His 
Account of the Murder of the French Missionary — Reception of the 
News of his Degradation. 

Calcutta, April 10. 

Let me finisli what I Lave to say of Yeli — no longer 
"Commissioner" Yeh, for his degradation has come down. 

Since I last wrote, a change has come over the behaviour 
of our Chinese detenu. At that time he would scarcely 
answer a question. A celebrated Eastern scholar called upon 
him to try to learn Buddhism from him. Yeh would not 
know anything about it. Mr. Layard tried to get him to 
admit that lie knew of such a man as Lord Palmerston, or 
of such a thing as public opinion in England. Yeh knew 
not of such a person as Palmerston. " Who is he % " he 
asked, with unblushing falsehood. Mr. Layard told him 
that, thinking he was in the right, he tried to prevent the 
expedition to China. Yeh answered him only by a grunt. 
The fat unwieldy king of Oude, who occupies the house im- 
mediately opposite, and grumbles all day long at being 
deprived of the solace of his zenana, manifested a curiosity, 
from which it seems crowned heads are not always exempt, 
and actually applied to the town major to have some trees, 
cut down which intercept the view of Yeh's verandah. The 
king would have called upon the mandarin if the latter had 
given him the least encouragement ; but Yeh treated all 
mention of him with the utmost scorn, refused to believe 
that he ever had been a king, and would not look towards 



yeh's interest in parliamentary debates. 429 

liis dwelling. An Englishman pointed out to Yeli the 
minister of the king of Oude, Ally Nucky Khan, the 
Talleyrand of the East. He was told that this thin wily 
Asiatic was known to have been deeply implicated in all the 
intrigues which preceded the late mutiny, yet he has trod 
the maze so cautiously that not a foot-trace of his presence 
can be found. " I will make a report upon your application," 
said Dr. Macnamara the other day, in answer to Nucky 
Khan. " Report ! " said the minister, with much scorn. 
" I withdraw my application ; and take my advice, young 
man, never make reports, never write a letter." Yeh, how- 
ever, could not be interested in these black potentates. He 
has great contempt for us that we have left any of their 
heads on. 

Suddenly, however, all this apathy has given way. The 
mandarin now converses with freedom : he condescends to 
deny all knowledge of the Hongkong poisonings. He en- 
deavours to explain away his proclamation for English heads. 
He expresses a special contempt for the East-India Com- 
pany and their magnates. " That is a very stupid man," was 
his short observation after he had chin-chinned to the door 
of his apartment an official of high rank, who had paid him 
a visit of ceremony ; " it is evident that he has no talent." 

The change has been brought about by the Calcutta 
journals and the British House of Commons. With the 
desperate hope of amusing his fellow -prisoner, Mr. Alabaster 
translated to him a few phrases from the debate upon the 
India Bill. From that moment Yeh has been a trans- 
formed man. He gets up early, and is restless until the 
Calcutta Englishman is brought j he is miserable if it does 
not contain its usual modicum of parliamentary eloquence. 
His particular delight is in the speeches which are most 
vehement against the Company. He thought Mr. Ayrton a 
great orator. When the interpreter came to that paragraph 
of Lord Palmerston's speech wherein he says that nations 
have suffered much by ill-considered changes, he was much 
excited, and said, " Good, good, good !" but when the trans- 
lator completed the sentence, *' But they have suffered much 
more by obstinate resistance to necessary reforms," he threw 



430 CHINA. 

himself back and grunted. He was delighted to hear that 
Lord Palmerston had been turned out, and he chuckled all 
through his great body when he heard Lord Derby's declara- 
tion that he hoped for a speedy peace with China. 

These readings are interspersed with many explanations and 
inquiries, and Yeh is really beginning to acquire some glim- 
mering notion of the British constitution. 

" I am afraid I weary your excellency," says the inter- 
preter, himself weary with two hours' arduous translation. 

" No j go on ! I understand it all now. It is much better 
than I used to get it from Hongkong. I never could under- 
stand them." 

" Then you did get translations at Canton ?■ " 

" Of course I did — from your teachers." Had he forgotten 
what he had said to Mr. Layard upon this, or v/as he simply 
indifferent to the admission of having stated an untruth 1 

Yeh was never so palpably moved as by the information 
that the letter which Mr. Oliphant delivered at Soochow"" 
contained enclosures from the ambassadors of England, of 
America, and also of Russia. He started and rose from his 
seat. It was quite evident that he had some secret cause for 
great surprise, if not for great indignation. You will recollect 
what the Chinese believed and told me as to an understand- 
ing between Russia and China. I cannot help recurring to 
my early belief that Count Putiatin has cards in his hand 
which he does not show Lord Elgin. 

Yeh gave us his version of the murder of the French mis- 
sionary. He says the man was dressed as a Chinaman and 
spoke Chinese, and no one suspected him of being a French- 
man ; that the people accused him of having stolen v/omen, 
and also of being a rebel ; so his head was cut off. " If," said 
Yeh, " any one had had a notion that he was a Frenchman 
he would have been sent to the French consul." 

There is probably not one word of truth in this. The two 
common, stock accusations by the Chinese against the mis- 

* While I was at Calcutta the news arrived that Mr. Oliphant, Lord 
"Elgin's private secretary, who had preceded his chief to Shanghai with . 
the letters mentioned at p. 384 of this volume, had delivered them to 
the authorities at Soochow. 



yeh's degradation. 4S1 

siouaries of all denominations is that they steal women, and 
that " they pick out sick men's eyes." What they mean by 
this latter imputation I could not discover, but I believe it 
is intended literally and not figuratively. 

Yeh received the edict which degraded him, with great 
equanimity. Sir John Bowring had forwarded a copy in the 
original Chinese. " I expected this," he said. " May I keep 
it some time to consider it ? " 

'• As long as your excellency pleases." 

'• Then I will keep it a week." 

The decree merited some consideration. It is much 
milder than was anticipated — much milder than the trans- 
lation which went to Europe would lead us to think ; for the 
translator has interpolated some words of censure not in the 
Chinese. It does not appear that, although Yeh is removed 
from his government, he is degraded from his rank, or from 
his post as grand councillor. He read it so ; for he re- 
marked, " Henceforward then, I have nothing to do with 
foreign affairs." 

" Your excellency must be glad to have escaped from so 
troublesome a post ?" 

" I am neither glad nor sorry. It was at the emperor's 
command I took them up, and at his command I lay them 
down." 

■ Yeh has been tenderly dealt with. He has evidently some 
great protecting interest in Pekin, and will probably become 
again a great power in China. 

Thus ends this episode of the Chinese expedition. Sub- 
sequent accounts tell me that Yeh is still happy and con- 
tented in his villa at Tolly Gunge. Mr. Alabaster is forcing 
upon his mind the principles of international law as enounced 
by Wheatley, and Yeh battles with them stoutly. I doubt, 
however, whether Yeh will remember much of his Western 
experiences when he goes back to Pekin. He has, hitherto, 
taken kindly to nothing except the parliamentary debates. 
If we can conceive Lord Eldon to have been taken prisoner 
by the Cherookies, imprisoned in a wigwam, and instructed 
in the red- skin mysteries by a juvenile medicine-man, we 
should still not expect to find much of the Cherookie 



432 CHINA. 

learning in Lord Eldon's decisions. I am afraid that Yeh 
is stolid enough to persist in affecting to consider that he 
is spending a portion of his life as a captive to people who 
are no better than barbarians ; and that, when he returns 
to his position at Pekin, he will import no Western ideas 
into Chinese policy. 



CONCLUSION. 

I employed a few weeks in seeing the province of 
Bengal, and then returned home. But in India I was 
acting without any commission for a public correspond- 
ence. The experiences I gained as to the home life of the 
peasantry were, to me, most interesting ; but I am not 
justified in placing in a book professedly written upon China 
the depositions which I took among the villages of Bengal. 
Meanwhile the Chinese expedition took another departure — 
the ambassadors and the fleets went northwards, the terrible 
bar at the mouth of the Peiho was passed, the forts at the 
mouth of the river were not capable of long resistance to the 
navies which have so often battered down the Bogue, and 
the city of Tien-sin was occupied without a contest. The 
water-way to Pekin is now open. As circumstances pre- 
vented me from describing the operations in the north, and 
as these letters are a narrative of personal experience, I may 
not assume the privilege of the historian to collate and com- 
pile. I now, therefore, take leave of the gallant and genial 
spirits of this fleet and army, wishing them God speed ; and 
of their chiefs, both of the gown and of the sword, hoping 
for them a happy issue to their difficult and not always 
agreeable labours. 



APPENDIX. 



TSANG WANG-YEISr 01^ THE ORIGIN OF THE 
EEBELLIOK 

I AM indebted to mj friend Mr. Wade, the " Chinese 
Secretary" at Hongkong (but ;^ at this moment attached to 
Lord Elgin as principal interpreter to the embassy), for the 
following very interesting document. Mr. Wade remarks 
upon it, that it has not been, and probably will not be, 
published by the Chinese government. It was obtained, 
not without difficulty, from an imperialist tradesman at 
Canton, in whose shop it was seen lying. The author, 
Tsang Wang-yen, is a distinguished member of the Han-Lin 
Academy. In former years he filled one of the higher 
clerkships in the Board of Revenue, was subsequently 
Executive Prefect of the Metropolitan department, and, 
Later, Commissioner of Finance for Fuh-Kien. The dis- 
covery of some immense deficit in the State Treasury, in or 
about 1839, led to the degradation of all whose official 
position ought to have made them earlier aware of the fraud 
or error detected, and Tsang Wang-yen was cashiered with 
some two hundred others of various degree. It was about 
this time that he addressed a celebrated memorial to the 
throne, recommending government to close Canton and 
limit trade to Macao, there to be enjoyed by the Portuguese 
only ; the many years' residence of this people at the port in 
question entitling them to such indulgence, so long as they 

2 F 



434 APPENDIX. 

traded for themselves alone, and not as the factors of other 
nations. If, however, the English repented them of opium, 
&c,, the " Macao foreigners" might become their sureties. He 
was also made the medium of charges against Kislien and 
Lin for their want of energy and neglect of advantages, when 
Sir Hugh Gough advanced on Canton. Mr, Wade saw him 
at Shanghai when on his way to Peking, whither he had 
been summoned by the emperor. He appeared to Mr. 
"Wade to be a plain, dignified old man, near seventy years of 
age, but vigorous and intelligent. He has been restored to 
rank as an expectant of the 5th grade, and will doubtless be 
gazetted ere long to some post of importance. His out- 
spokenness is not at all without precedent : general denun- 
ciations of official falsity and cowardice have been frequent 
even in tins short reign ; but unless some individual de- 
linquent be pointed out, they rarely produce any effect. 
The notes are by Mr. Wade. 

" Your Majesty's servant Tsang Wang-yen, expectant 
of a metropolitan office of the 5th grade, presents a memo- 
rial, in which he honestly declares the cause of the troubles 
in Kwang Tung ; with reverence setting forth his limited 
views, he looks upward hoping for the Sacred Glance 
thereon. 

" The reason why brigandage, existing always and in all 
parts of the province, is now worse in Kwang Tung than it 
ever was before, is simply that for a series of years no steps 
have been taken aga,inst the members of lawdess societies ; 
the real criminals have never been apprehended ; the facts 
have been utterly concealed or glossed over. Accordingly^ 
the ill-savour of brigandage has daily increased ; lawless 
societies have daily multiplied. Gradually spreading to the 
provinces adjoining Kwang Tung, the evil has affected the 
whole empire ; Kwang Tung itself is still, as it were, inun- 
dated by it. To speak of it is truly matter of pain. 

" The San-Hoh Hwui (Triad Society) already existed as a 
denomination before the first year of Tau Kwang (1820).;^ 



APPENDIX. 435 

but its members were enrolled in secret^ nor were tlieir pro- 
ceedings as yet such as to attract attention. In tbe eleventh 
year of Tau Kwang (1831), the Censor Fung Tsahhiun 
reported that he had ascertained that in five provinces this 
society had its seals, flags, and registers. In reply to his 
memorial the imperial pleasure was received that [the guilty] 
should be sought for and punished ; and although, not to 
mention the punishment of one gang [or case] in KweiChau, 
to which the aforesaid memorial did not relate, not a single 
seizure or prosecution was heard of in Kwang Tung or any 
of the other provinces [to which it did refer] ; still [the society] 
did not as yet venture to throw off all restraint. In the 
eighth moon of the twenty-third year of Tau Kwang (1843), 
a thousand men or more, Triads and members of the ISTgo 
Lung Hwui (Sleeping Dragon Society) fought together with 
arms in the village of Yung-ki, in the district of Shun-teh. 
Three of them were killed ; but their lives having been lost 
in private feud of lawless persons, no report was made to the 
authorities, and they took no more notice of it than if it had 
never occurred. 

"In the first moon of the twenty-fourth year of Tau Kv/ang 
(December, 1843), the feud revived, and members of both 
Triad and Sleejjing Dragon societies, natives of several 
districts, numbering some thousands, had a second fight at 
the village of Kwei Chau, in Shun-teh, in which above a 
hundred were killed and several hundreds wounded. The 
magistrate of the district, Han Fun-siang, vfho had but just 
taken charge, repaired to the spot as soon as he heard of the 
matter, and, having restored order, hurried to the city and 
made his report to the high authorities. They instructed 
him not to allow the thing to be noised abroad. 

" Some time after this a representation was made by the 
Censor Chu-ki, in answer to which an imperial decree was 
transmitted [through the Council] directing inquiry to be 
made and punishment inflicted. On the receipt of this at 
Canton, the draft of an undertaking was made out and sent 
to the district magistrate, who was to call on the gentry to 
sign it, as if of their own accord, and thereby certify that 
there had been no affray with arms between members of such 
societies. The gentry refusing, the intendant Kichingeh was 
2 F 2 



436 APPENDIX. 

sent to them. He repaired in person to the village of Kwei- 
chan, and constrained them to sign it, by threatening to 
report them to the Throne as recusants if they did not. At 
the same time he got up a story to the effect that, it being 
an annual practice with the people of the locality in ques- 
tion to form themselves into societies (Iiwui), with the object 
of outdoing one the other in the show made at their religious 
festivals, there had been a collision between some of the 
boats employed in a contest of this kind at Kwei-chau, but 
that the result had been merely an altercation, and not an 
affray. And from this time forth [the authorities] allowed 
no man to mention the words hwui-ji (lit. confederated vil- 
lains, se. lawless societies). Thus, with sedition of an unusual 
character disturbing the country, they had the audacity so 
to dress the facts [as to make the substance appear to have] 
vanished utterly [the chasm to have been] completely filled 
up. It was delinquency of this kind that was denounced by 
your servant, being then examiner in chief for the Metro- 
politan Prefecture, in a memorial presented by him in the 
15th year (1835). He therein declared that in the in- 
creasing degeneracy of the official establishment, the members 
of which, in any and every case, were so intent on escaping 
the penalty [of mal-administ ration], that they never scrupled 
to keep to their sovereign in the dark. He saw with alarm 
the progress of an evil which ought in no wise to be allowed 
to extend itself. And it was doubtless owing to this 
[official delinquency] that the lawless persons in question 
lost all respect of the law j the high authorities, they argued, 
do not prohibit our enrolment in secret societies, and we are 
only too well pleased to enrol ourselves. Hence did the 
mischief, weed-like, spread throughout the province, and 
thence to Kwang Si, until it included, as at present, both 
Kiang Nan and Hu Nan. 

"In the autumn of the 24th year (1844) certain of these 
vagabonds, belonging to other provinces, came to the villages 
of Kiang-k'au and Lung-ta, in your servant's native district, 
Hiang-shan, to entice people into the society. At first but 
a few scores would assemble for the purpose, and by night ; 
but, in course of time, bodies of several hundreds held their 
meetings publicly and in broad day. The j^lace of these 



APPENDIX. 437 

assemblies was always a cross road, and here those assembled 
would post themselves with guns and small arms, to keep off 
the troops, should any attempt to surround or seize them. 
Every new member, on entering, subscribed three hundred 
cash, and members were allotted twenty cash for every recruit 
they induced to join. Members already sworn attending at 
subsequent meetings, which was termed ' going to the play,' 
were allotted each man ten cash. When members wero 
sworn, a paper tent was set up ; on the wall hung a large 
horizontal label, which the memorialist is unable to describe^. 
By the side of it sat a man in white clothes and cap, who' 
was called the Ama. The new members passed in by a 
sword-gate (^. e. under two swords crossed), and kneeling 
down, were instructed by the Ama in the mystic language 
of the society. Each one pricked the tip of his finger with 
a needle till blood was drawn, and then took a sup from a 
bowl in which this blood was mixed with water. The Ama 
then with a loud voice read certain words of rebellious 
import, responses to which were repeated by the whole 
of the initiated together. They then rose. The chief in 
degree at each place of meeting was styled the Red Staff ; 
the second, the Paper Fan ; the third. Straw Shoes. The 
Red Staff might preside over some score, some hundreds, or 
some thousands of members. The prefecture of the provin- 
cial city, the outer prefectures, the districts, and the village, 
w^ere all recognized as the lodges of such and such a presi- 
dent ; the lodge being considered a great or a small one 
according to the number presided over. The Hed Staff 
pretended to the title of yuenshwai, generalissimo, as he was 
styled in the secret language of the society ; the Paper Fan, 
to that of klun-shwai, general of the grand division ; and 
the Straw Shoes to that of fsau-pdu-t-ung-sin, intelligencer- 
general. The military and runners attached to the official 
establishments were all members, and while the poor, who 
knew no better, were seduced to become so by their eager- 
ness for a trifle of gain, some even of the orderly agricultural 
population as w^eli, and respectable people in trade, were 
forced to enlist themselves in self-defence against the 
persecution to which they were exposed. They found, 
however, that even then they were as liable to exactions 



458 APPENDIX. 

as before ; on every occasion tliey were called on to 
supply the funds ; and as their treatment grew more and 
more vexatious, bringing witl] it repentance, which Avas now 
too late, they would have been disposed, one and all, to face 
the autliorities and denounce themselves. None of the 
official establishment, alas ! would have cognizance of the 
matter. On the contrary, one ignored it in the other's 
interest, and the other in his.* 

" In the winter of the same year, some houses in the great 
South Street of the city of Hiang-shan, your servant's native 
district, were entered in broad day by a hundred and more 
Triads armed with swords, who threatened the dwellers, 
and kept them in until they had extorted money of them. 
It happened fortunately that Lin Kien, a magistrate chosen 
from among the twelfth-year masters,t having temporarily 
vacated his post to mourn for a parent, was at home in his 
district ; he put himself at the head of the gentry of Sz'-ta, 
Teh-nang, and other places, and with them drew up a code 
of regulations, in which it was strictly provided that any 
Triad coming from any other part of the country and at- 
tempting to induce men to join, as also any son or younger 
brother of any family in the aforesaid places, who should 
enlist in the Triad Society, should be seized and delivered 
up to the authorities for trial and punishment. A pro- 
clamation was likewise obtained from the Imperial Commis- 
sioner, Kiying, authorizing the people to kill any persons 
committing robbery with arms, without fear of prosecution. 
But, though Hung Ming-hiang, brigadier of Chinese troops 
in Hiang-shan, and Luh Sun-ting, magistrate of that district, 
did on different occasions seize Kau Wang-yuen, Chan Pei-kii, 

* The crime should have been detected by the district magistrate, by 
him denounced to the prefect ; by the prefect to the intendant, and so 
upwards ; but the disclosure would have made some, if not all, punish- 
able for non-prevention. There was therefore an understandiug that 
none should impeach the other for wilful concealment. 

t Kil-jin, or masters of arts, who have thrice failed at the triennial 
examination to pass as tsin-sz\ and have not as yet served the state 
may present themselves at court as candidates for official employ- 
ment. They are introduced by twenties, and, in each twenty, four are 
selected to serve as district magistrates, and ten as officers of instruc- 
tion of districts or prefectures. 



APPENDIX. 439 

and Li Atwan, Triad leaders, who were so severely dealt 
with, that for a time little more was seen of Triads in Hiang- 
shan, 3"et they were punished only as if they had been 
robbers in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The 
authorities dared not utter the word hwui, and the conse- 
quence was, that not only throughout the major and minor 
districts of the province were other confederacies formed, 
and Triads enlisted in untold numbers, but even on the 
■"White Cloud Mountains, close to the provincial city, meet- 
ings for enlistment were held at all times and seasons ; and 
from this period not only were merchants, travelling by sea 
and land, carried off and plundered, but walled cities and 
villages were entered, the pawnbrokers' and other shops, as 
well as private houses, ransacked, and their proprietors 
held to ransom. IsTot above one or tv/o in a hundred 
pawn-shops formerly existing in this province now re- 
main. When these things were complained of to the 
authorities, so far from immediately pursuing and capturing 
the guilty parties, they subjected the persons robbed to 
every description of annoyance j let many days pass before 
they had the scene of the robbery inspected ; extorted fees 
for the employment of man and horse on that mission of the 
complainants ; until, in most cases, the latter kept their loss 
to themselves for fear of worse trouble, and not one robbery 
in a hundred was reported at all. Even where a gang or 
two were seized and punished, the case was modified as one 
of robbery ; there never was any property that would have 
identified the prisoner as a Triad produced. But a more 
extraordinary circumstance is the following : — V/hen it was 
known that these lawless persons were in a particular 
locality, the military and police never went there in pursuit 
of them, but called on the gentry of the place in question to 
deliver them up ; and when the gentry, being without either 
military or police at their disposal, were unable to do this, 
and the real delinquents had vanished to a distance, the local 
authorities would bind the spirit-tablet, representing the 
progenitor of a tribe in the ancestral hall, with chains, and 
carry it to their official residence, there to be kept in 
durance. 

" By the empire's established law, provision is made that 



440 APPENDIX. 

the man of crime shall be without descendants ; bnt such 
administration of the law as this [now cited] in Kwang 
Tung, whereby crime is visited on the ancestors of a race, 
is indeed what one has rarely heard of; and while the 
magistrates are going all lengths of illegality, no question 
is ever raised by the higher authorities. For instance, 
requisition is made in a criminal prosecution, not for 
the chief delinquents in particular, but for a certain 
number, who are to be delivered up ; the really guilty 
having long before this betaken themselves to such a dis- 
tance as wil] keep them clear of the case, a shift is made 
to complete the number required by purchasing substitutes. 
Thus in the Tungkwan case last year, there were actually 
blind men and boys of tender years sent up to Canton, nor 
were they released until the governor passed througli his 
court [to make inspection of the prisoners under sentence of 
death]. There is no saying what number of guiltless people 
have suffered the penalty (lit. the woe) of guilt. And this 
is a reason why the members of these societies are enabled 
to go forth and induce the peojjle, incensed and execrating 
[their superiors], to join their ranks. 

" In the 27th and 28th years of TauKwang (1847-8) 
members of unlawful societies in hundreds and thousands, 
carrying tents and armed, took up whatever positions they 
pleased, first at one place and then at another, throughout 
districts of Ung-yuen, Jli-yuen, Ying-teh, and Tsing-yuen, 
barred the ways, made prisoners, and committed robbery. 
The authorities feigned ignorance of this. In the 29th year 
(1849) they did proceed against some parties in Ying-teh 
and Tsing-yuen, but they still described them as outlaws 
of particular gangs, or as roving outlaws. On no account 
would they utter the word hwui. It was in view of 
this demeanour on the part of the authorities that these 
villains became more reckless than ever. They proceeded 
accordingly with their secret enlistments, and in the spring 
of the present year they commenced disturbing in the pre- 
fecture of Chan-chau. The districts of Lien-chau and Ying- 
teh were overrun by large bodies of them committing 
robbery in all directions. In the 5th moon the city of 
Tung-kwan was lost, but subsequently retaken. The village 



APPENDIX. 441 

of Ta-shili in Pwan-yii was harassed by these people, and 
before they could be exterminated, Fuh-shan in Nan-hai 
was regularly occupied by outlaws, Avliile Liang-lung and 
Chin-tsun in Shunteh, Kiang-mun and Lo-ti in Sin-hwui, 
and Shaping-yii and other places in Hoh-shan,'"' joined in 
the cry. In the 7th moon the cities of the prefecture of 
Shau-king, and the districts of Shun-teh, Ho-shan, Tsang, 
Tsung-hwa, Hwa, and Ying-teh, were all taken, and those 
of the prefectures of Hwuichan and of Shau-chau, and the 
major district of Lien-ping, invested ; the government 
couriers and of&cial communications being stopped along 
every line of road. Now, the outlaws from other provinces 
were not more than a hundred or a few hundred men, while 
those of Kwang Tung, turbaned in red and with banners of 
red, as a signal to their friends, were in bands of such force as 
to occupy positions. How could it have come to pass, unless 
enlistment had been going on for several tens of years before, 
that a rising in one place should have been responded to in 
so many others ? — that those partaking in it should have had 
the audacity to attack provincial cities and seize district 
towns '? should have, flood-like, inundated [the land] as at 
present ? All that he narrates has been witnessed in his 
own country by your servant himself; he is in nowise 
indebted to rumour for his information. 

'' With matters at their present pass, it may seem difficult 
to handle them rightly. In the aifair of the Tung-kwan 
district, however, your servant made the following observa- 
tions. The acting magistrate, Hwa Ting-tsiun, who had 
always been more or less popular, had been some days 
removedt from his office when the troubles in Tung-kwan 
broke out ; he was immediately reinstated as acting magis- 
trate, and within a few days the rebels of the district were 
hiding their heads, X those of other districts ha,d dispersed, 
and all was quiet. Your servant made a similar observation 
in the troubles which disturbed Hiang-shan, his native 
district. The acting magistrate, Kin Tsai-ying, took charge 

* Hoh-shan, in Sh^u-king Fu, is said to be the birthplace of 
Triadism. 

+ Removed, not for any offence. 

X Lit., sparing of their foot-prints. . - ^ ■ . 



44:2 APPENDIX. 

of his post ill the third moon. His frugal and unpretending 
habits readily inclined the peoj^le to him. On hearing of 
the disturbances in Tung-kwan, he went to different villages, 
and himself mustered and inspected the militia, bestowing 
handsome rewards on the more deserving. He also earnestly 
pressed on Si-hiang and Lung-tu the adoption of certain 
regulations which Lin-kien, one of the gentry, had carried 
out in Sz'-ta and Nang-teh, as also of some others respecting 
which a number of villages had submitted to him in a joint 
petition. Your servant is further informed that, when the 
alarm was fresh at Fuh-shan and in Shun-teh, and communi- 
cations with the city were intercepted, this officer went day 
and night to the different river ports, directing the gentry 
as to the method of defending their several localities, and 
that on several occasions he seized parties of spies, to the 
number of some tens, who were immediately executed. 
Between the 10th and 15th of the seventh intercalary 
moon (about September 10, 1854), the outlaws seized 
Kiang-k'au (Kong-hau), in the north of the district, and 
beset the district city itself The day after the investment 
had begun, he advanced at the head of the militia of Chang- 
chau, Yuen-fung, and Chang-ki, and at once relieved the 
city, killing several hundreds of the enemy. Several attacks, 
subsequently made from the west, were vigorously repulsed 
by the same magistrate at the head of the militia of Lung-tu 
and other villages ; and at Hiang-kioh, and Hai-kau (Hoi- 
hau), he sunk several vessels and killed a hundred or more 
of the enemy. Again, when Yuen-fu, Chang-ki, and other 
places on the water east of the district city, were attacked, 
he headed the militia maintained by the safety committee of 
the district, sunk several vessels, and destroyed large numbers 
of the enemy. 

" The magistrate in question, thus exerting himself with 
all his heart and with all his might, so won the affections 
of the literati and people, that not only did the well-con- 
ducted put forth their strength in his service, but those who 
had been ever before unruly, repented them, and joined him 
in the destruction of the enemy, and in keeping him off 
when he pressed on the district city. It may hence be seen 
that while there is one good man a magistrate, he will be 



APPENDIX. 443 

able so to encourage the literati and the people as to defend 
and preserve his jurisdiction. 

" Your servant observed the same thing in the troubles of 
Sin-hwui. The to^vn of Kiang-mun was taken, and the 
district city besieged by the outlaws ; but lio-yoh-chung, a 
general officer past seventy years of age, who was residing in 
the district, of which he is a native, acting in concert with 
one or two gentlemen of energy, had laid in a supply of food, 
arms, and ammunition long before the enemy appeared, and 
with some picked militia, made a stout defence of the city. 
He maintained strict discipline, and so found means, although 
the outlaws several times assaulted the city at all points at 
once, to beat them off with his artillery : after losing some 
thousands of men, they kept themselves at a distance. Thus 
is it that, if there be one gentleman of capacity in a city 
exposed to danger, he will be enabled to hold it. 

" In Nanhai, again, a joint effort was made by the gentry 
and people of ninety-six villages. Strict discipline was 
maintained amongst them, and the offers of the enemy, who 
would have purchased a way through their country, rejected. 
The enemy attacked them several times, but was always 
driven back by their fire with great loss. Thus did the 
effort of the loyal population of a single spot bar the passage 
of the rebel van. 

" Your servant observes that the chief and only object of 
the jueasures now being adopted is the dispersion of the 
members of these societies ; [not their reform or restora- 
tion to useful purposes]. Would but the high authorities of 
the province, with sincerity and in a public spirit, make 
search in all directions, and assembling all persons, whether 
officials or gentry, whether of high or low estate, whom 
they might find it useful so to employ, cause them to de- 
liberate together with the advantage incident to numbers in 
council ; then, putting away all consideration of self, would 
they but listen impartially to the suggestions these might 
submit to them, employing as their own the talent that 
they found most commandiug in the multitude ; not esteem- 
ing themselves and depreciating others ; but where efforts 
had been made by the gentry or the people, recommending 
them, without reference to their status, to the favour of your 



444 APPENDIX. 

Majesty, and then making public to all men by proclamation 
throngbout the poorer villages and retired hamlets what 
encouragement had been bestowed on these, your good sub- 
jects would be more than ever stimulated to exertion, and 
even the degenerate would repent and reform. It was said 
on your servant's journey [to the capital], that the object of 
these outlaws is plunder. But the booty taken being retained 
by the leaders, the multitude who follow are left without 
any, are consequently unable to obtain food, and as many 
are continually destroyed by the troops and militia, great 
numbers are jDenitent and anxious to regain the right way 
without loss of time. The present, then, is an opportunity 
which it becomes more than ever a duty to seize, to invite 
the people far and wide [to come back to their allegiance], 
and to console them ; forgiving them the past, enjoining 
them to renew themselves. They should be authorized to 
return to their labours in the field, and such inquiry should 
then be instituted as would thoroughly effect a dispersion of 
the body of these societies. The body once dispersed, the 
sanguinary leaders who might be left, and who are not above 
a hundred in number, might be exterminated without much 
difficulty : such men, for instance, as Chin-Kwang-lung, Ho 
Aluh, and Kau Shi-teh, of Fuh-shan; Ta Chun-keih, Ying 
the matbuilder, Hai-chun Kwan (Kwan, the Shrimp's-egg), 
A-kwa Sz', and A-shing San of Shun-teh ; Chin Afa-tsai, and 
Fung Tiau-t'au-tsai (the head-wagger) of Hoh-shan ; Kau- 
shih-siang (the flea-elephant), single-eyed Chin, and Liang 
of the Little Bridge of Kiang-mun ; and Kin A-kwang, and 
Kiang Ahan of Pwan-yii ; with others who have got a name 
in the provinces. 

" But unless those in office combine in earnest with the 
upright gentry of their jurisdiction, they assuredly cannot 
discharge this duty. If in everything there is to be con- 
cealment and misrepresentation, if a real effect be not the 
object sought, if the only aim of officials be the name of 
action without the reality, the satisfaction of their responsi- 
bility so as to answer the purpose of the moment only, the 
end of these things cannot be told. 

" His feelings towards his home {lit. his mulberry and ts£ 
trees) would not suffer him to refrain from exposing with 



APPENDIX. 445 

sincerity the fountain of these troubles. With respectful 
earnestness he has put forth his limited views. It will be 
for your Majesty to decide whether his suggestions can be 
adopted, and an imperial commission sent to the governor- 
general and governor of the jurisdiction to inquire into the 
facts detailed by him, and take steps accordingly. 

" He respectfully tenders his memorial, and prostrate 
prays for the sacred glance of your Imperial Majesty 
thereon." 



INDEX. 



AcnuNG, the Chinese writer, 280, 284. 

Aden, her voyage to China, 1 et seq. 

Aden, city of, 2. 

Agriculture, in China, 245 et seq. ; exercised 
"under different conditions, 248, 249. 

Alabaster, Mr., interpreter to Yeh, 358; 
Yeh's treatment of him, 400. 

Alum, the Chinese baker, action against, 55. 

America, her manufacturing rivalry, IQS. 
J Americans, their application at Canton to 

be permitted to trade, 145 ; act the part 
of " lookers on," 231 ; their diplomacy 
at Canton defeated, 275 ; co-operate with 
England and France, 383, 384. 

Amoy, island of, 86 ; city of, 8/ ; described, 
87 et seq. ; military of, 89 ; ship of war 
at, 259 ; danger threatened at, 282. 

Anatomy, Yeh's opinion on the study of, 
411. 

Anderson, Dr., his surgical duties, 37. 

Anhui, population of, l63, 164. 

Anson's Bay, in the Canton river, 20. 
i Anstey, Mri Chisholm, at Macao, 67. 

i A'Pak, the Cantonese pirate, 131 ; his 

I massacre of the Portuguese pirates, 132. 

Arabs, of Egypt, 2 n. 

Arms, depot of, at Canton, 357. 

Arrow, a Chinese lorcha, dispute respecting 
the, 288 et seq. 

Ashburnham, General, his voyage to China, 
1, 11 ; liis arrival at Hongkong, 45, 71 i 
his departure for Calcutta, 251. 



B. 



Baby-tower, of Shanghai, 99. 
Banca, Straits of, shipwrecks in, 83. 
Bars of the Canton river, 24. 
Barter trade, working of the, 201. 
Bate, Captain, death of, 330. 
Bay of Islands, visit to, 7. 
Beale, IMr., death of at Shanghai, 234. 
Beggary in China, 36 1. 
Benevolence, as propounded by Yeh, 421. 
Bengal, Bay of, 3 ; the writer's visit to the 
province of, 432. 



Bible, Yeh's opinion of the, 409; his objec- 
tion to receive it, 410. 

Birds-nest soup, 240. 

Blenheim Fort, capture of the, 289. 

Blenheim Passage, in the Canton river, 
23, 24. 

Blockade at Canton raised, 381. 

Bluejacket Fort blown up, 334, 335. 

Boatmen of the Canton river, their con- 
fidence in the English, 304. 

Bogue forts of the Canton river, 21 ; their 
capture, 295, 296. 

Boils, the blossoms of the flowery land, 140. 

Bowring, Sir John, his reception of Lord 
Elgin at Hongkong, 72; attacked with 
fever, 83 ; his reproof of the writer, 234 
n, ; his active co-operation with the Bri- 
tish forces attacking Canton, 2S9 et seq. 

Bread and rice not allowed at a Chinese 
dinner, 242. 

Bridges of the Chinese, their beauty, 114. 

Brigades, formation of the troops into, for 
attacking Canton, 311. 

British ships of war on the Chinese station, 
258. 

Brown, Mrs., 304. 

Buddhism, philosophy and religion of, 121, 
122 ; Yeh's opinion of, 408 ; of the 
Chinese, viii. Pre/. 

Buddhist hell, effigies of a, 139. 

Buddhist temple, visit to a, viii. Pref. 

Buddhist temples of Hangchov/, II9. 

Bumboats of the Chinese, 23. 

Bund of Shanghai, walk through the, 213 
et seq. 

Bungalows at Penang, 5, 



Calcutta, her dangerous situation, 35, 36 j 

her arrival at Hongkong, 72; proceeds 

towards Canton, 251. 
Calcutta, Lord Elgin's departure for, 79, 

83; exports to, 17O; arrival of forces. 

from, 279 ; Yeh's arrival at, 427. 



448 



INDEX. 



Caldwell, Mr., the " Protector of the Chi- 
nese," 2/8; his great judgjment, ib. 

Calicoes, sale of, in China, 186. 

Camoens, grave of, at IMacao, 70. 

Canal, imperial, of China, 113, 114; its 
beautiful banks, 114. 

Canton, deficiency of provisions in, 14 ; 
distant view of, 24, 25 ; forts of, 25 ; plan 
of the intended operations against, ib.; 
advance on, 27; address to Lord Elgin 
urging the capture of, 44 ; diflBculties of 
the attack on, 43, 49; confusion and dis- 
tress in, 50 ; speculations on its capture, 
52, 53, 80, 82 ; corrupt English used at, 58, 
59 ; strategic capabilities of, 75 ; descrip- 
tion of, 75, 76; notices of Lord Gough's 
attack on, 76; our future policy towards, 
76, yy ; triumphal monuments at, to com- 
memorate the expulsion of the English, 
113; reports from, received at Chusan, 
144 — 1 60 ; threatened by the rebels, 145 ; 
necessity of its capture, 155; prepara- 
tions for, 228, 231 et seq. ; forts and 
defences of, 232 ; preparations for at- 
tack, 253 ; waiting for forces, ib. ; the 
corrupt officials of, 270 ; proclamation 
announcing the intended attack, 280 ; 
Admiral Seymour's general orders for 
attacking, ib.; strength of the invading 
force, 283; negotiations previous to the 
attack, 284, 287; various channels of the 
Tiver, 284 ; active operations against, and 
Admiral Seymour's despatches respecting, 
288 ; history of the transactions which led 
to the attack on, 288 et seq. ; the Whale 
River taken possession of, 296 ; flight of 
the river population from, 298, 299 ; the 
fleets take position before, 300 ; view 
of from the Honan side, 303 ; recon- 
noissance of on the western and eastern 
sides, 306, 307; satisfactory survey of, 
308 ; characters of the merchants and 
mandarins, 309 ; plan of attack, 310, 311 ; 
general orders for the assault, 311; its 
bombardment, 314, 315 ; the assault, 
320 ; scenes at, 322 et seq. ; its capture, 
329—333 ; the city entered, and the 
governor and Tartar general captured, 
335, 336, 341 ; traversing of the city, 337 ; 
capture of the treasury, 339; a council 
formed for the government of, 346; list 
of casualties at the capture of, 349—351 ; 
letter from, 352; blockade of raised, 353 ; 
interior of the city and its orderliness, ib. ; 
curiosity-shops, ib. ; street of the tri- 
umphal arches, 354 ; the nine-storied 
pagoda, 355; the houses and yamuns of, 
ib, ; the depots of arms, 357 ; losses sus- 
tained by the Chinese during the bom- 
bardment, ib. ; secret treasures found in, 
362; intricacies of the city, 364; the 
governor's yamun, 365 ; rambles through, 
366; execution- ground of, M67 ; site of 
the old factories, 369 ; the temples, 370 ; ' 



the Tartar city, ih. ; the Fatee gardens, 
ib.; Runtinqua's house, ib.; prisons of, 
and their horrors, 372 et seq. ; sepoys at, 
378; question of reopening the trade of, 
379, 380; raisinf? of the blockade, 381; 
police established, ib.; the Chinese new 
j'ear at, 332 ; site of the new factories at, 
ib.; merited chastisement of the inha- 
bitants, ib.; Yeh's account of the prepa- 
rations at, 422 71 ; the king of Cochin- 
China's historical notices of our contests 
with, xviii. xix. Pre/. 

Canton river, different creeks of the, 16; 
defeat of the Chinese junks in the, 16, 17; 
description of the, 20, 21 ; bars made by 
junksin the, 24 ; quarrels of the Chinese in 
the, 41 ; promotions for the brilliant affair 
in, 42 ; return ot casualties during the con- 
tests in the, 45; agricultural features of 
the, 245 ; ships of war in the, 259 ; block- 
ade of the, 280. 

Carp, capture of, 327. 

Carrington, Captain, 333. 

Castle Beak Bay, in the Canton river, 20. 

Casualties, return of, in the force engaged 
in the Canton river, 45. 

Ceylon, notices of, 3. 

Chapel Island, near Amoy, 86, 

Chekiang, population of, l63, l64 ; capture 
of, 210. 

Chihli, population of, l63, l64. 

China, difficulties of obtaining correct in- 
formation from the interior, 49, 50 ; re- 
bellion in, 50 ; fear of the rebels capturing 
Canton, 51 ; rumoured abdication of the 
emperor, 64 ; policy of employing the 
sepoys in, 73, 74 ; numerous islands and 
population of, 85, 91 ; voyage along the 
coast of, 85 et seq.; tea districts of, 90; 
infanticide of, 100; progress of the re- 
bellion in, 101 ; journey into the interior, 
102 ; thieves and pirates of, 103 ; probable 
antiquity of her edifices and customs, 104 ; 
progress of the rebellion in, 106 ; impe- 
rial canal of, 1 13 ; irrigating- wheels of, 
ib. ; triumphal monuments of, ib. ; the 
Buddhist religion of, 121, 122 ; progress 
into the interior from Hangchow to 
Ningpo, 126, 127; menacing aspect of 
the rebels, 146, 147; despatches from the 
emperor, 148; system of purchase in the 
army, 153 ; on the British import trade 
in, 162 et seq,; geographical view of, l62; 
immense population of, ]6J ; balance of 
trade in, 164, 165 ; silk exports to, l65 ; 
statistics of, 166, l63; opium trade of, 
171 et seq. ; statistics of the trade of. 182 ; 
reasons alleged for the paucity of British 
exports to, 185, 186; articles of commerce 
appreciated in, 186; rebellions of, 189; 
numerous changes and revolutions in, 
190 ; dangerous classes of, IQO, 191 ; her 
custom-houses and tariff, 193 et seq.; 
manufactured goods imported into, 198— 



INDEX. 



449 



200 ; geograpLical divisions of, 203 ; view 
of the interior up the Yang-tse-Kiang 
river, 205 ; commercial advantages to be 
derived from, 208 ; agriculture in, 245 et 
neq.i ships of war on the China station, 
258 ; necessity of free transit through, 
2/0 et seq.; her commercial capacity as 
unmeasured as her internal geography is 
unknown, 274 ; Americans and Russians 
co-operate with England and France, 
383 ; the allied expedition to, 384 ; the 
author's adieu to, 385 ; general igno- 
rance and assumption of English scholars 
in, 389—392; language of, 392, 393; 
study of the law of, 4l6, 417; Tsang 
Wang-yen's account of the rebellion in, 
433 ; letters respecting, collected in this 
Tolume, favourably received, v.Pref.; 
treaty concluded with will open the in- 
terior to Western commerce and Christian 
civilization, ib. ; fragility of the whole 
social system of, ib, ; her unyielding re- 
sistance to change, vi. ; the king of 
Cochin-China's historical notices of, xvi. 
— sx. : her contests with the English, 
sis. ; her concessions, xx. ; Lord Elgin's 
opinion of our future policy towards, 
sxi. xxii. ; the writer's endeavours to note 
useful facts relating to, xxiii. 
Chinese, at Penang, 4; their numbers, 
5 ; their number at Singapore, 7 ; their 
complaint that the English do not fight 
fair, 21; their ready ingenuity, 22 ; their 
confidence in the British, 23 ; severe 
contest with them in the Canton river, 30 ; 
their mutual quarrels in the Canton river, 
41 ; their astonishment at the sight of a 
European, 110, 112; their industr)-. 111, 
112; their apathy in religious matters, 
122, 123; their general civility, 128; a 
manufacturing people, 188 ; their com- 
mon-sense views of trade and commerce, 
202, 203 ; food and cookery of the, 235 ct 
seq. : calm composure of the populace 
amidst British preparations, 277 ; their 
-earh' means of gaining intelligenre, 281 ; 
their treacherous attack on an English 
party in the Canton river, 286 ; their 
arrogant proclamations, 311 ; indifference 
of the people to the fiery missiles, 31 6; 
their bravery, 333 ; their inferiority in the 
military art, ib. ; domestic life and habits 
of the, 355, 366 ; their depot of arms at 
Canton, 357 ; their losses at the bom- 
bardment of Canton, ib. ; difficulties of 
acquiring their language practically, 359, 
360; the best methods of dealing with 
tbem, 360, 36l ; their national character- 
istics, 389, 390 ; our true policy in dealing 
with them, 390 ; teachers of, 392, 393 ; 
their ridiculous ceremonies and forms 
must be exploded, 390, 394 ; philosophy 
of the, 418 ; no elaborate essay on their 
general character here introduced, vii. 

2 



Pref. ; impossibility of a Western mind 
forming a conception of Chinese charac- 
ter, ib.; their moral philosophy, viii. ; 
possess a ceremonial religion, ib. ; their 
difi^erent systems of religious belief, ib. ; 
their indifference to theological dogmas, 
I viii. ix. ; their habit of lying, x. ; tlieir 
v,'ant of politeness, x. xi. ; fine senti- 
ments and foul deeds of their statesmen, 
xi. ; their strange characteristics, xi. 
xii. ; their ethics and moral axioms, 
xii. ; present force, or self-interest, their 
strongest bonds, xiii. ; remarks on their 
policy, xiv. ; English commerce v^ith 
them, xviii. ; judgment of their temper 
and prejudices to be best formed from 
their writings, xx, 

Chinese beggars, 36 1. 

Chinese city described, 319. 

Chinese dinner, 239 et seq. 

Chinese Expedition, its journey out, 1 et 
seq. ; its arrival at Hongkong, ; battle 
of Fatshan, 15 ; its diversion to India, 48 
et seq. i Lord Elgin's departure for Cal- 
cutta, 79 ; the voyage to the north, 84 et 
seq. ; diplomatic movements connected 
with the, 142; its intended operations 
against Canton, 209 et seq. ; its prepara- 
tions, 228 ; its occupation of Honan, 275 ; 
its operations at Canton, 288 ; its bom- 
bardment of Canton, 297 ; its capture of 
Canton, 322; its journey northward, and 
its arrival at the Peiho, 432 ; letter* 
respecting, contained in this volume, 
favourably received, v. Pref. 

Chinese new year, celebration of the, 382, 
386. 

Chinese passengers, their treatment, &'. 

Chinese physician, interview with the, 105. 

Chinese pilot, 24. 

Ching Tsing, the Chinese merchant, visit 
to, 8 ; his wife, 9. 

Christmas Day in the Canton river, 310. 

Chu-ki, the censor, 435. 

Chuenpee, fort of, in the Canton river, 20. 

Chung-king, city of, 207- 

Church service in a pack-hoase, 304. 

Chusan, letter from, 134; voyage to, from 
Ningpo, ii.,- harbourof, 136; beautyotthe 
island, 137.139; necessity tor occupying, 
140 ; unhealthiness of, ib. , desirability 
of, as a harbour of refuge, iGl. 

Cochin-China, historical notices written by 
the king of, xvi. Pref. 

Cochrane, Captain, miraculous escape 
of, 35. 

Commerce promoted by the rebellion, 189- 

Commissariat, bad management of the, 326, 
327. 

" Committee of war " in Canton, 377. 

Competition, Yeh's opinion of, 403. 

Comprador of Hongkong, 57, 58. 

Confucianism of the Chinese, viii, Pref. 

Confucius, religion of, 122 ; philosophy of» 

G 



450 



INDEX. 



and Yeh's opinion of it, 408 ; Christian 
maxim of, xii. xiii. Pre/. 

Cooke, Capt., 358. 

-Cookery of the Chinese, 235 et seq. 

Coolies, their peculiar characteristics and 
utilitv, 278 ; their valuable services, 324, 
325, 339. 

Cooper, Mr., death of, 345; his cruel treat- 
ment, 37s. 

Coromandel, the flagship of Admiral 
Seymour, 19; her contests in the Canton 
river, 2o et seq. ; gets aground, 23. 

Cotton, Mr., his conversations with Yeh, 
411. 

Cotton breeches, extensive use of, 18". 

Cotton goods, s.ile of, 199. 

Cowloon, Peninsula of, 71 7i. 

Cowper, Capr., of the royal engineers, 290. 

Crealock, IMajor, resigns his staff appoint- 
ment at Canton. 358. 

Creeks of the Canton river, I6. 

Curiosity-shops at Shanghai, 225; at Canton, 
353. 

Currencyof China, 182, 183. 

Customs and tariffs of China, 193 etseq.; 
edicts respecting, 193. 



D. 



Deers' tendons served at Chinese dinners, 

243. 
Dempster, Dr., his departure for Calcutta, 

251. 
Dew, Capt., 305, 307. 
Dickson, Dr., his journey into the interior, 

102, 109. 
Differential duties, considerations on, 197. 
Dinners of the Chinese, 229 ; different 

courses of, 240 et seq,; their character, 

244. 
Discipline among the attacking forces at 

Canton, 327. 
Dissection, Yeh's opinion of, 411. 
Douglas, Lieut., 28. 
Doyle, Capt., bravery of, 30. 
Dress of the women at Hongkong, 387. 
Drills and sheetings, the English outrivalled 

in the sale of, 198. 
Ducks' tongues served at Chinese dinners, 

243. 
Duke Ho, wealth of, 414. 
Dutch Folly, capture of, 29O. 
Duties, transit and ditferential, 193—197 ; 

levied by the Chinese in the English 

name, 257; on exported tea, 271 ; received 

without the emperor's permission, 414. 



E. 



Edgell, Capt., of the Tribune, 17, 313, 314 ; 
head of the water police, 381. 

Edinburgh Review, its opinion on Hong- 
kong, 52. 



Edkins, Mr., the missionary, 102, I06 ; a 
great Chinese scholar, 107 ; his learning, 
ib. 

E-ke-le, sent as envoy to Russia, 213. 

Elgin, Lord, address to, by the resident 
merchants of Hongkong, 44 ; his arrival 
at Hongkong, 65, 72 ; speculations as to 
his intended policy, 73 ; his answer to the 
merchants' address, 78 ; his departure for 
Calcutta, 79 ; the force by which he is 
accompanied, 81 ; the propriety of his 
policy, ib. ; abandons his intention of 
proceeding immediately to Pekin, 159; 
his correspondence with Commissioner 
Yeh, and his ultimatum, 260 et seq. ^ 
directs the attack on and capture of Can- 
ton, 280—333 ; his address to Peh-kwei on. 
his installation to the council of Canton, 
347; his interference with the Canton 
prisons, 377 ; his prospects in the north, 
385, 385; reflections on his future 
policy, 389 ; his reply to the merchants of 
Shanghai, xxi. Pre/; development of hia^ 
policy and principles, xxii. — xxiii. 

Eli Boggs, the Hongkong pirate, 68; his 
trial and conviction, GQ. 

Elliott, Commodore, expedition under, in 
the Canton river, 15 — 18; his bravery, 30 j 
report of his operations, 289, 290. 

Embezzlements of the mandarins, 414. 

Emily Jane, the opium-ship, Qi. 

England, responsibilities assumed by, 150; 
possesses the right of claiming guarantees 
against abuses of other nations, 150, 151- 

England and France, Americans and 
Russians co-operate with, 333, 384 ; their 
determination to proceed northward to 
Shanghai and Pekin, 384. 

English, their embassy to Pekin in I8I6, as 
related by the king of Cochin-China, xvii. 
Pref.i their incursions, xviii.xix. ; tht-ir 
commerce, xviii. ; concessions made to - 
the, XX. 

Escape Creek of the Canton river, 16 ; cap- 
ture of the junks in the, 17, 18 ; return of 
casualties in the force engaged in the, 45 — 
47. 

Ethics of the Chinese, xii. xiii. Pre/. 

Ethics, as propounded by Yeh, 421. 

E xaminations for academic degrees in China^; 
415,416. 

Execution-ground of Canton, 367 ; its bar-- 
barous horrors, 368. 

Executions of the rebels by Yeh, 406. 

Export trade, reasons for its unsatisfactory 
condition, 193. 

Exports, from Great Britain and India to 
China, 165; table of, l67; history of, 
169, 170 ; declared value of, 17O; com- 
pared with those to Calcutta, ib. ; of 
opium, 171 et seq.; reasons alleged for 
the paucity of from Britain, 185, 185; 
duties on, 194; unpopular in China, 
200. 



INDEX, 



451 



F. 



Factories of Canton, site of the, 369; new 
ones. 382. 

Fatalism of Yeh, 408. 

Fatee gardens of Canton, 3/0. 

Fatshan, battle of, 15 — 20 ; city of, on the 
Canton river, 2-1 ; the river branch of, ib. ; 
capture of, and retreat from, 3S; Commo- 
dore Keppel's account of the battle of, 
38 — 40; Admiral Seymour's letterrespcct- 
ing, 41; promotions for the brilliant affair 
of, 42 ; visit to the wounded of, 43 ; list 
of casualties at, 45. 

Field allowances, withdrawal of, in India, 
74. 

Fishing-boats exposed to pirates, 130 ; pay 
convoy duties, ib. 

Flying-fish of the Bay of Bengal, 3. 

Foo-chow-foo, civil contests at, 15 ; visit to, 
90 ; its commercial importance, ib. ; tre- 
mendous typhoon at, l6l ; ship of war at, 
259 ; danger threatened at, 282. 

Food of the Chinese, 235 et seq. 

Formosa, intended occupation of, 55 ; chan- 
nel of, 91. 

Forsyth, Captain, of the Hornet, 17. 

Fort Seymour, in the Canton river, 26 n. 

Fowler, Lieutenant, his skill and bravery, 
30, 31. 

French, their expedition towards Pekin, 
143 ; their co-operation with the English, 
230 ; their squadron at anchorage, 233 ; 
declare a blockade of the Canton river, 
280 ; exchange civilities with the English, 
283 ; their assault on Canton, 339- 

French missionary, murder of a, 430. 

French plenipotentiary, his address to Peh- 
kwei on his installation to the council of 
Canton, 348. 

Frenchmen, equivocal compliment paid to, 
224. 

Fuhning, the centre of the tea-district, 90. 

Funeral ceremony at Shanghai, 2l6, 217t 

Fung Tsahhiun, the censor, 435. 



G. 



Garrett, General, at Hongkong, 71, 

Crenouilly, Admiral C. R. de, his general 
oiders for attacking Canton, 313. 

Geography, Yeh's acquaintance with, 412. 

Geological features of China, 245. 

Germany, her manufacturing rivalry, 19S. 

Gough Fort, at Canton, 35 ; attack on, 315 ; 
capture of, 321 ; blown up, 334, 335. 

Graham, Col. H., mounts the wall of Can- 
ton, 329. 

Grain-junks, of the Imperial Canal, 115. 

Gros, Baron, his arrival at Hongkong, 226 ; 
his co-operation in the enterprise against 
Canton, 230. 

2 G 



H. 



Hall, Capt. W. K., flag-captain, 290, 292; 
his dangerous task of distributin g; placards, 
310. 

" Hall of Patriotism and Peace," members 
of the, 257. 

Hall's Terrace, at Canton, 327. 

Hamilton, Lieut., 29. 

Han River, its commercial importance, 203. 

Hansrchow, arrival at, 115; letter frona, 
116; the city and suburbs of, II6 e^se^,,' 
customs duties at, 117; the great custom- 
house of, 118; difficulties of entering, 
ib,; Buddhist temples of, 119; its 
ancient importance, 120 ; formal entrance 
into, 123, 124; the interior of the city, 
124, 125; tea beverage of, 125; custom-, 
houses of, 153. 

Hannan, city of, 205. 

Haughty, her contests -with the Chineso 
junks, 31. 

Hiang-shan, city of, 43S, 4-11. 

Hiangshan district, contributions from, 
147. 

History, Yeh's acquaintance with, 412. 

Hocker, Col., concealed treasure in his 
quarters, 362. 

Holloway, Col., captures the governor of 
Canton, 338; appointed one of the go- 
vernment council, 346; his court of 
justice, 356. 

Honan, population of the island, 163, l64 ; 
occupied by the British, 285 ; British 
quarters at, 301 ; confusion in, 302. 

Hongkong, letters from, 9, 15, 43,56,65,79, 
226, 228; description of, 9 etseq.; capital 
of, 11; fleet in the harbour of, 10, 11 ; 
inconvenience of the mail arrangements 
at, 44 ; Edinburgh Reviewer's opinion 
on, 52 ; general impressions of, ^Qet seq, i 
comprador of, 57; climate of, 6i ; sanitary 
condition of, ib. ; fmma and /ora of, 62 ; 
animals of, 62, 63 ; social qualities of the 
residents, 64 ; Lord Elgin's arrival at, 65-, 
72 ; sanitary condition of, 65 ; insecurity 
of its waters, 66, 6/ ; inhabitants of, 71 ; 
departure of the expedition from, 84 ; 
treacherous disposition ol the natives, 
158; arrival of the British and French, 
plenipotentiaries at, 226 ; arrivals of mili* 
tary and naval forces at, and preparatipns 
for the capture of Canton, 228 et seq. ; 
ships of war on the station, 258 ; topics 
of conversation in, 352; the Chinese new 
year celebrated at, 386, 387 ; dress of the 
women, 38/ ; races at, 388 ; cession of, 
XX. Pref. 

Hongkong, the, gets aground, 29. 

Hooghly, Yeh's arrival at, 425. 

Horses at Hongkong, 62. 

Howqua, of Canton, his interviews with 
Governor Yeh, 145; his cruelty to pri- 



452 



INDEX. 



Eoners, 377; l»is conferences respecting 

the opening of trade, 379, 380. 
Hue, M., his views of the opium-trade of 

China, 175. 
Huliatt's soup-kitchen at Canton, 378. 
Hupeh, population of l63, l6i. 
Hyacinth Island, in the Canton river, 25. 



Imperador, her arrival at Hongkong, 22", 
229. 

Import trade of Britain into China, 162 ei 
seq. ; remarks on the, 201. 

Imports, duties on, 195. 

India, intelligence of the insurrection in, 
48; diversion of the Chinese expedition, 
48 et seq. ; pay of troops in, 7-1 ; with- 
drawal of the field allowance in, if). ; news 
of the mutiny arrives at Hongkong, 79 ; 
disheartening news from, 154 ; and their 
absorbing interest, 252 ; Yeh's curiosity 
respecting the history of, 412 ; the writer's 
visit to, 432, 

Indian potentates, Yeh's contempt for, 
428, 429. 

Indian regiments, pay of, 74 ; withdrawal of 
allowances to, ib. 

Infanticide in China, 100. 

Inflexible conveys Yeh to Calcutta, 395, 
405 ; nautical exercises on board, 424. 

Interpreters in China, deficiency of, 358, 
359, 394; difficulties of obtaining, 359; 
misapplication of their powers and duties, 
359, 360 ; iheir prejuoices and general 
ignorance, 391 — 394. 

Irrigating- wheels of China, 113. 



Japan, the Russian treaty with, 234 ; Queen 
Victoria's present to the emperor of, ib, 

Joss-house, a night in a, 135 ; bivouac in a, 
322, 323. 

Jugglers of Shanghai, 224. 

Junks, Chinese, their defeat in the Canton 
river, I6, 17; their capture, 22; their 
contests with the British, 31; their de- 
struction, 32, 36 ; number destroj'ed, 37 ; 
promotions for the gallant affair, 42 ; 
return of casualties during the contests 
with, 45 ; necessity for disarming them, 69. 



K. 



Kearney, Major, assistant quartermaster- 
general at Canton, 21; his character and 
death, 22, 34. 

Keashin, a first-class city, 112; description 
of, 112, 113; curiosity of the inhabitants, 
112. 



Kei-ying, his report to the emperor in 
1842, XV. r>-ef.; his portraiture of the 
Western barbarians, ib. 

Keppel. Commodore, expedition under, 15 — 
19 ; da>hing character of, 28 ; his contests 
with the Chinese junks, 32, 33 ; his attack 
on the junks in the Katshan branch of the 
Canton river, 34 ; destroys the Ciiinese 
junks, and enters the city of Fatshan, 
36 ; his account of the battle of F«tshan, 
38 ; his trial and acquittal for the loss of 
the Raleigh, 43. 

Key, Capt., captures Yeh, 341, 342. 

Khoon-Khaii, the European prison at Can- 
ton, 374. 

Kiahing, city of, 109 ; visit to, 110 ; descrip- 
tion of, 1 U . 

Kialing river, 207. 

Kiang-k'au, seized by the rebels, 442. 

Kiangsu, population of, i6h, i64. 

Killed and wounded in the Canton river, 
return of, 45—47. 

Kingchow, city of, 206. 

Kiang-mun, captured by the rebels, 443. 

Kishen, governor of Canton, xix. Frtf.; 
his death, ib. 

Koolongsu, island of, sG. 

Ku-jin, examination of the, 438 n. 

Kupar CreeK, landing at. 317. 

Kwan Tapier, military commander of 
Shaouhiiig, 147. 

Kwang Tung, rebellion in, 434, 441. 

Kwei. town of. 206, 207. ' 

Kwei-chau, village of, 436. 



Ladies, small-footed, of Shanghai, 218; 

hovv the smallness is produced, 219- 
Land forces, their list of casualties at 

Canton, 351. 
Languages of China, 393, 394. 
Layard, Mr., his conversations with Yeh, 

428. 
Leckie, Captain, his bravery, 34. 
Le Szeting, the Tartar civilian, his report, 

148. 
Lin, governor of Canton, xviii. xix. Pref. 
Lin Fuhshing, despatched against the 

rebels, 147. 
Lin's Fort, capture of, 333. 
Lin Kien, the magistrate, 438. 
Lintin, pyramidal islet of, 20. 
Literature of China, 392—394. 
Looking-glasses, appreciation of, 186. 
Looting, system of, 327. 
Lozario, the Chinese interpreter, 358. 
Luard, Major, first on the wall of Canton, 

320. 
Lugard, Colonel, at Hongkong, 71 ; his 

death and character, 279- 
Lying, habitual to the Chinese, x. Pref, 



INDEX. 



453 



M. 



Jfacao, pirates in the neighbourhood of, 
67; passage to, z6.,- its appearance from 
the sea, 69 ; its decay, 70 ; possesses the 
grave of Camoens, ib. ; pleasantness of, 
ib. ; ships of war on the station, 258. 

Macao Fort, in the Canton river, 23, 24 ; 
garrisoned by the English, 285 ; capture 
of the, 239. 

Ilacartney, Lord, notices of his diplomatic 
mission to China, 143. 

Wacdonald, Major, at Hongkong, 71 ; his 
departure for Calcutta, 251. 

McGowan, Dr., the American missionary, 
ICO, 107, 108. 

SIcGowan, Jlrs., anecdote of, 100. 

Wail, bad arrangements of tlie, at Hong- 
kong, 44. 

IMalacca, Straits of, 3. 

Malays, characteristics of the, 4, 5 ; their 
laziness, 8. 

IManchus, historical notices of the, xvi. 
Pi-ff. 

Mandarin, posted with placards, 311. 

Mandarins, how they levy transit, duties, 2/0 
et seq. ; their miserayjle residences, 355 ; 
have only a nominal salary, 377; their 
extortions, ib. ; their secretaries. 41/; 
sometimes of superior minds, xv. Pref. 

Mandarins' junks, seizure of, 54. 

Mangostein of Penang, 6. 

Man-hing, village of, 105. 

Manilla-men, their contest with the Can- 
tonese pirates, 132. 

Mann, Captain, of engineers, 331, 334. 

Jilanufactured articles most in request, 186, 
187; deficiency of the Chinese in pro- 
ducing, 188, 189; rivalry experienced in 
th« introduction of, 19S; prices of, 199, 
200. 

Manufactures, British, introduction of into 
China, 202, 203. 

Manure, collected by the Chinese, 248. 

Marines, their list of casualties at Canton, 
349, 350. 

Marriage processions at Shanghai, 221. 

Martineau, Captain, appointed or.e of the 
government council, 346; his offices and 
apartments, 365. 

Meadows, JMr., the consul at Ningpo, 153. 

Jfecca, port of, 2. 

ilinnesnta, the American monster frigate, 
254 ; her wonderful arrangements, 276. 

Missionaries, their labours, 107, 103, 122, 
123; their contests with rival sects, 176, 
177; their difiBculties, 181. 

Monsoon in the Chinese seas, 85. 

Moral philosophy of the Chinese, viii. Pref. 

Morality of the Chinese, xii. xiii. Pref. 

Morrison, Captain, provost-marshal, 32/. 

Mosquitoes, annoyance of, 136, 349. 



N. 



Namoa, island of, 85. 

Nanhai, the rebels defeated at, 443. 

Nankin, difficulties of, 211. 

Napier, Sir Charles, his silly advice, 252. 

Naval force on the Chinese station, 258 ; at 
Canton, 313; list of casualties at Canton, 
349. 

New year of the Chinese at Canton, 3S2 ; 
throughout the empire, 386. 

Ngo Lung Hwui, society of, 435. 

Nicholson, Sir F., his observations on the 
late typhoon, iGO. 

Ningpo, arrival of the expedition at, 127 ; 
its commercial character, 129 ; voyage 
from, to Chusan, 134; unrestricted trade 
to, and its advantages, 151, 152 ; defence- 
less state of, 153; opium dens at, 177, 
178 ; tea-garden at, I78 ; varieties of 
English goods at, 197; famed for the 
perfection of its cookery, 238 ; ship ol 
war at, 259. 



Oliphant, Mr., 430. 

Opium, duties levied on, 148; prices of, 
157; trade of, in China, 171 et seq.; 
its extensive use and culture, 1/4; 
smokers of, 177; dens of, at Ningpo, 
177, 178; cost of opium-smoking, andE 
difficulties of abolishing, 1/9 ; custona 
dues upon, 181; statistics of, 182; the 
king of Cochin-China's historical notices 
of the opium-trade disputes, xviii. Pref. 

Osborn, Captain S., of the Furious, 229. 

Oude, king of, Yeh's contempt for, 42Q. 

Overland journey to the East, 3. 



P. 



Pagoda, nine-storied, of Canton, 354,355. 

Pagodas, origin of, 104. 

Pakenham, Colonel, at Hongkong, 7I; his 
departure for Calcutta, 251. 

Palanquins, use of at Penang, 4, 5. 

Parke, Captain, captures the Treasury of 
Canton, 333. 

Parkes. Mr., the British consul, 288 ; his 
dangerous task of distributing placards, 
310; appointed one of the government 
council, 346 ; overworked as interpreter, 
358. 

Pechelee, Gulf of, 82, 

Peh-kwei, governor of Canton, 143, 150, 
337 ; his squeezing propensities, 158 ; his 
capture, 333 ; brought before Lord Elgin, 
343; appointed one of the government; 
council, 346; ceremony of installing him, 
347 ; addresses delivered to, 347, 348 ; 
his yamun, 355 ; his tribunal, 355 ; his 



454- 



INDEX. 



polite impertinence, ib. , lils grovelling 
propensities, 362; his proclamation, 3/1. 

Peiho river, speculations on the proposed 
expedition to the, 82 ; arrival of the 
Anglo-Frenrh expedition, 432. 

Pekin, Russian mission to the court of, 142 ; 
supplies of food to, 210, 211 ; how the 
city may be starved out, 213 ; reported 
to be in a state of famine, 234 ; determi- 
nation of the allies to proceed to, 384 ; 
arrival of the Anglo-French expedition in 
the river Peiho, 432; Yuen Fuh-siuen's 
notices of the English embassy to, xvii. 
xviii. Pre/. 

Pellew, Captain, resigns his staff appoint- 
ments at Canton, 358. 

Penang, description of, 4; waterfall of, 5 ; 
mangos tein of, 6. 

" Penang lawyers," 6. 

Penrose, Captain P.C., of the Winchester, 
290, 292. 

Pheasant-shooting on the Canton river, 247. 

Philosophy of the Chinese, 418. 

Pigs, capture of, 327. 

Pih-kwei {see Peii-kwei). 

Piracy, extent of on the Chinese coasts, 
130 ; of the Portuguese lorchas, 132. 

Pirates, destruction of, 54 ; in the neighbour- 
hood of Macao and Hongkong, 66, 68 ; 
authors of revolutions in China, 190. 

Placards, posting of around Canton, 310. 

.Plover, her important uses, 285. 

Police established at Canton, 381. 

Politeness, want of among the Chinese, x. 
si. Prtf. 

Porcelain bowls used at a Chinese dinner, 
242. 

Portrait-painters at Shanghai, 225. 

Portuguese, their power in the Chinese seas, 
130 ; act both as convoy and pirates, ib. ; 
massacred as pirates, 132. 

Portuguese of Macao, their ruffianism in 
the Chinese seas, 130, 133; European 
control to be exercised over such lawless 
ruffians, 133. 

Prisoners, Yeh's treatment of, 407. 

Promotions for the affair at Fatshan, 42. 

Puntiiiqua's house, at Canton, 370. 

Putiatin, Count, his embassy to China, 142; 
bis cautious diplomatic movements, 143 ; 
not allowed to land at the Peiho, 159; his 
return to Shanghai, 234 ; his treaty with 
the Japanese, ib.; his arrival at Hong- 
kong, 254 ; his dissatisfaction at his recep- 
tion by the authorities of Pekin, 255 ; 
co-operates with the English and French, 
383. 

Puto, sacred isle of, 91. 

Fvm, Lieut., treacherously attacked by the 
'Chinese, 286. 

-= Captain, his court of police at Canton, 

355. 

Pyramid, the great one of Egypt, 2 j ascent 
of the, ib. ; anecdotes of, ib, n. 



Queen, the, seized by the Chinese, 67; treat- 
ment of the English, 68. 
Queen's troops in India, pay of, 74. 



Racehorse, her return from Foo-chow-foo, 
15. 

Races at Hongkong, 38/. 

Raleigh, in Hongkong harbour, 13 ; wreck 
of tlie, 13, 70 ; wreck sold by auction, 55 ; 
trial and acquittal of Admiral Kcppel for 
loss of the, 43. 

Rats at Hongkong, 63. 

Rebellion in China, 106; religion of the 
rebels, 107; Tsang^Wang-yen's account 
of its origin, 433, 

Rebels, Yeh's general execution of, 406, 

Red Sea, voyage of the Aden through the, 2. 

Reed, Mr., the American Commissioner, 254; 
his diplomacy at Canton defeated, 275 ; 
co-operateswith England ar.d France, 383. 

Religious systems of the Chinese as ex- 
pounded by Yeh, 419,420; the different 
sects, viii. Pref, 

Rt-mi, letter from on board of the, 84 ; her 
departure from Hongkong, ib. 

Rice, supplies of, to Pekin, 210, 211. 

Rice-junks, their voyages to Pekin, 211, 
212, 

Rocket-spears of the Chinese, 318. 

Rockets, destruction caused by tlie, 318, 
319. 

Rolland, Captain, his bravery, 34. 

Rosina, a drug-vessel, 134; her voyage 
from Ningpo to Chusan, 134 ctseq. 

Russell, Rev. Mr., missionary at Ningpo, 
177. 

Russia, her diplomatic movements in the 
Chinese struggle, 142,' 143; her plenipo- 
tentiary not allowed to land at the Peiho, 
159; her manufacturing rivalry, 198, 199; 
reports of her amicable understanding 
with China, 213; co-operates with Eng- 
land and France, 383, 384. 



Samson destroys the pirate junks, 54. 
San-Hoh Hwui, society of, 434. 
Sanpans, of the Canton river, 3l6. 
Sappers and Miners, skill of the, 304, 305. 
Sawchee channel of the Canton river, iG, 

22 ; exploration of the, 17. 
Sea-slugs, stew of, 240. 
Second Bar anchorage in the Canton river, 

22. 
Second Bar creek of the Canton river, I6. 
Sehoo, village of, near Hangcliow, liS; 

Lake of, 120 ; Buddhist temple of, ib. 



IND] 



455 



Sepoys, policy of employing them in China, 
73, 74; their cost, 74; arrival of at 
Canton, 3/8 ; their ridiculous habits and 
customs, 3/8, 379. 

Seymour, Admiral Sir Blichael, at the battle 
of Fatshan, 19 ; his letter to Commodore 
Keppel respecting the battle of Fatshan, 
41 ; his general orders for attacking Can- 
ton, 280 ; his despatch detailing the trans- 
actions which led to the attack onCanton, 
288 et seq. ; his final orders for attack- 
ing Canton, 31 li 

Seymour, Lieut., his bravery, 34. 

Shanghai, letter from, 99. ; description of, 
95 ; commercial importance of 95, 96 ; 
English settlement at, 95 ; its increasing 
prosperity, 96 ; description and statistics 
cf, 97, 98; Baby-tower of, 99 ; infanticide 
of, 100; letters from, 142, 156, 158; Eng- 
lish and French ambassadors expected at, 
154 ; prospects of the silk-trade at, 156 ; 
failure of the rice and cotton crops, 158 ; 
trade of, 193 ; letter from, 209 ; walk upon 
the Bund of, 213 ei seq.; manners and 
customs of, 214 et seq. ; custom-house 
of, 215; funeral ceremony at, 2l6, 217; 
the small-footed ladies of, 218, 219; 
tiflSn-time at, 220 ; marriage processions 
at, 221 ; tea-gardens at, 223 ; jugglers of, 
224 ; curiosity-shops, &c., 225 ; ship of 
war at, 259; protection of, 232; deter- 
mination of the allies to proceed to, 384 ; 
customs revenue of, 413. 

Shangti, spiritual meanings of, 419, 420. 

Shantung, population of, I63, l64. 

Shangtung guild of merchants, dinner given 
by the, 238. 

Shaouhing, invested by the rebels, 146, 147; 
tlie imperial troops despatched for its 
relief defeated, 146, 150. 

Shooting party on the Canton river, 245, 246. 

Shuntih district, contributions from the, 147. 

Shwang, the Tartar general, 149- 

Silk, exports of from China, l65 ; transit 
duties on, and their evils, 272. 

Silk districts, disturbances in the, 157. 

Silk trade, prospects of the, at Shanghai, 
156. 

Silver, increase of quantity, and decrease of 
value of, 182, 183. 

Singapore, description of, 7 ; its commerce 
and population, ib. ; number of China- 
men at, ilj. 

Singapore mail-boat, arrival of at Hong- 
kong, 45 ; her departure for England, 64. 

Sinhwuy district, contributionsfrom the, 147. 

Soohai, the imperial general defeated by 
the rebels, 146, 150. 

Souchau boats, description of the, 102. 

Soup served at dinner, 241. 

Squeezing system in China, 133, 195. 

Star-and-Garter Hill, near Canton, con- 
verted into a fort, 25 ; stor.ming of the, 
i6, 30. 



Statesmen of China, their fine sentiments 
and foul deeds, xi. Pre/. 

Stewart, Captain Keith, his passage up the 
Canton river, 20 ; his operations at Can- 
ton, 291. 

Straubenzee, General, his admirable cha- 
racter, 285 ; his general orders for form- 
ing the troops into brigades, 311; his 
decreasing popularity, 379. 

Sturgeon skull-cap, served at dinner, 241. 

Suez, harbour of, 2. 

Surgery, Yeh's opinion on the practice of, 
411. 

Stuart, Captain, 334. 

Swachow, port of, 85. 

Swatow, city of, 158 ; danger threatened at, 
282. 

Sz'chuen, population of l63, l64; the last 
and finest province of China, 20/ ; its 
productiveness and wealth, ib. ; its supply 
of rice to Pekin, 210, 211. 



Tai-chi, spiritual meanings of, 420. 

Tamsui, tremendous typhoon at, 16I. 

Taoists, the Buddhist philosophers, 122. 

Taoli of Confucius and of Buddha, 408 ; 
the language of the mandarins, and 
governing classes of China, 417 ; different 
meanings of, 419; something like destiny 
in the eyes of the Chinese, vi. Pref. 

Tariffs of China, 193—196. 

Tarrant, IMr., his action against Alum, the 
Chinese baker, 55. 

Tartar, colloquy with a, viii. Prcf. ; his ready- 
wit, ix. Prcf. 

Tartar city of Canton, 370. 

Tartar general of Canton captured, 343. 

Tartars, sortie of, at Canton, 332 ; their 
repulse, ib.; their furtiveness, 334; 
absent themselves, 340. 

Tchang, city of, 206. 

Tea, the poet-emperor's praises of, 125 ; 
prospects of the trade, 157 ; transit 
duties on, and their evils, 271, 272. 

Tea districts of China, 90. 

Tea-gardens at Ningpo, 178; at Shanghai, 
223. 

Teas, quality of, on hand, 380. 

Temple, Capt.,"king of the Coolies," 325, 
326. 

Temples of Canton, 37O. 

Thorn, Mr. Consul, his report on the 
barter trade of China, 201. 

Tiffin-time at Shanghai, 220. 

Tiger Island, in the Canton river, 21. 

Tinghai, city of, 135; slaughter of the 
Chinese at, 136; harbour of, ib.; its 
capabilities for defence, 138 ; English, 
burial-ground of, 139. 

Tobin, his cruel punishment, 133, 134, 152. 

Toutai, the Chinese mandarin, 133, 134. 



456 



INDEX. 



Trade, balance of, in China, 164 ; question 
on re-openinj, at Canton, 379, 3S0. 

Trade and commerce, Chinese common- 
sense vieivs of, 202, 203. 

Trade and diplomacy of Canton, 3"S. 

Tranait, loss of the," 83. 

Transit duties, 194 ; how the mandarins 
levy them, 2/0 et seq. 

Treasury of Canton captured, 339. 

Triumphal arches, street of, at Canton, 354. 

Tsan;^ Wang-yen's account of the re- 
bellion in Ciiina, and its origin, 433 et 
serj.; biographical notices of, 433, 434. 

Tseang-keun, the Tartar general, captured, 
343. 

Tszekee Creek, of the Canton river, 16. 

Tung-koon, in the Canton river, town of, 
18. 

Tung-kwan, district of, 441. 

Typhoons of the rhine>e seas, 91, 141 ; 
their destructive effects, 141 ; practical 
observations on, lOO. 



V. 



Victor, Prince, of Hohenlohe, fortunate 
escape of, 35. 

Victoria, Hongkong, v'ant of quarters in, 
11; description of, ib. ; ships in the 
harbour of, 12, 13; city of, 71) ; city of 
at sundown, "1 ; killing time at, ib. 

Victoria Peak, Hongkong, 10. 



W. 

Wade, Mr. Thos., Chinese secretary at 
Hongkong, and principal interpreter to 
Lord Elgin's embassy, 268, 433 ; his notes 
on Commissioner Yeh's correspondence, 
26s ; delivers the demand of the English 
and French plenipotentiaries, 280 ; over- 
worked, 358; obtains the document of 
Tsang Wang-yen on the origin of the 
rebellion in China, 433; his researches 
among Chinese papers, xvi. Pre/. 

M'anchow, commercial advantages of, 91. 

Wang, the Chinese admiral, 53 ; his death, 
ib. n. 

Wang, the Chinese interpreter, 353. 

Wang- Poo river, 94, 95 ; journey up the, 
102", 103, 105. 

Wantung Islands, in the Canton river, 21. 

Watches, appreciation of, 186. 

Waterfall of Penang, 5. 

M'^etherall, Col., at Hongkong, 71 ; his 
departure for Calcutta, 251. 

Whampoa, fort of, 233. 

White Dogs, islets of, 90. 

Wilson, Capt. T., his arrival at Canton, 293. 

Wines, different lands of served at dinner, 
241. 

Worn of Hongkong, 33/, 383. 



Woollen goods, the English outrivalled 112 

the imports of, 198. 
Woosung, village of, 94. 
Wounded, great care of the, 43, 44. 
Wuchung, city of, 205. 
Wurgman, Mr., treacherously attacked by 

the Chinese, 286. 



X. 

Xanoti, image of, ix. Pref. 



Y. 



Yang-tse-Kiang river, arrival at the moutif 
of the 92 ; its great extent and im- 
portance, ^2, 93 ; newly-formed island at 
its mouth, 93; styled the "Father of 
rivers," &c. 94; voyage up the, 103; 
the great mouth of the interior of China, 
204 ; imaginary voyage up the, 205 ; 
its rapids, and the means of passing- 
them, 206. 

Yankee, visit of the, to the " Great Pyra- 
mid," 2 n. 

Yeii, governor-general of Canton, his im- 
passability, 5(» ; romantic story respect- 
ing, 51 ; report of his interview with. 
Howqua, 145 ; reports of his intentions 
and proceedings, 146, 148—150; gives 
orders for opening the trade, 147 ; his 
policy approved by the emperor, 154; his 
position as negotiator, 256; Lord Elgin's 
corresi)ondence with, 260 et seq.; his 
evasive replies, 262, 267 ; Mr. Wade's 
notes on his letter, 268 ; his refusal to 
negotiate with the American diplomatist, 
275, 276 ; his preparations for resistance, 
276 ; his refusal of terms proposed, 287 t 
his yamun bombarded, 291 ; his continued 
obstinacy, 335 ; his capture, 336, 341 ; his 
interview with the plenipotentiaries, 344; 
his insolence, 345 ; sent on board the 
Inflexible, 346; his besotted character, 
363 ; his barbarous cruelties, 367 ; ruins, 
of his palace, 368 ; taken prisoner to 
Calcutta, 385, 395 ; accompanied by 
the writer, 395 ; his general character- 
istics, 396 et seq. ; his personal appear- 
ance, 397 ; his treatment of Mr, Alabaster 
and the writer, 400 ; his assum.ed pom- 
posity, ib. ; his submissive behaviour^. 
401 ; his conversation, ib. ; his diet, 401, 
402 ; his habits, 401 et seq. ; his religion, 
ib.; his dirtiness, 403; various inter- 
views with him, 404 ; his departure, 
405 ; his sea-sickness, ib. ; his desultory 
conversations, 406 et seq. ; his execution 
of the rebels,//;.; a fatalist, 408; his 
reception of the bishop of Victoria's, 
tracts, 409 ; his opinions on dissections, 
411; his acquaintance with geography 



INDEX. 



45r 



and history, 412 ; his opinions on various i 
subjects, 4!3 tt se'j.; on competition, 
413; his prevarication and falsehood, 414, 
415; his parentage, 415 ; his four aca- 
demical degrees and examinations, 415, 
416 ; his proficiency in olBcial-paper 
writing, 416; his exposition of Chinese 
philosophy, 418 ; his account of the pre- 
parations at Canton, 422 n. ; arrives 
at the Hooghly, 425 ; his stupid apathv, 
425, 426 ; lands at Fort William, 427 ; 
his contempt for Indian potentates, 428 ; 
his receptioD of the news of his degrada- 
tion, 431 ; remains happy and contented 
in his villa at Tolly Gunge, ih. : his un- 
ing resistance to change, vi. Pref. ; the 



Eldon of China, ii.; Lord Elgin's rid- 
dance of him, il>. ; state papers found 
among his archives, xiii. xiv. xvi. 

Yu, sepulchre of, 120; poverty of his de- 
scendants, 127, 

Yuen Fuh-siuen, king of Cochin-China, 
xvi. Prp/. ; historical notices of the 
Chinese dynasties written by, ib. ; ex- 
tract from the chronicle of, xvii. ; his 
animadversions on the English barba- 
rians, xvii. xviii. 

Yun Lin, wonders of the, II9. 

Yung river, voyage along the. 135 ; banks 
ot the, lb.; mouth of the, ib.; its feeble- 
defences, 135. 



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